Cellular & Microscopic Biology

Mold is a type of fungus, and it's everywhere — indoors, outdoors and even in the air. But is black mold worse than the rest? Is it as deadly as people say?

By Melanie Radzicki McManus & Austin Henderson

Yep, fungi are all around us — in the grocery store, in the woods or living on your discolored toenail. And fungi can break down almost anything.

By Jesslyn Shields

No life, except possibly very small bacteria, would exist on Earth without photosynthesis.

By Jesslyn Shields

Chloroplasts are where some of the most miraculous chemistry on Earth goes down.

By Jesslyn Shields

Centrioles are spindles that create the pathways for chromosomes to follow during cell division.

By Jesslyn Shields

Prokaryotic cells are like single-room efficiency apartments while eukaryotic cells are like mansions with many rooms — and they are the only two kinds of cells in the world.

By Jesslyn Shields

The part of your cells that helps you recover from a hangover is shaped like a maze of tubes and is made of two parts — the rough endoplasmic reticulum and the smooth endoplasmic reticulum.

By Jesslyn Shields & Yara Simón

The mass of microorganisms swarming inside your favorite elite athlete's body may be a great business opportunity.

By Amanda Onion

While plant and animal cells are strikingly similar, there are a few key differences.

By Jesslyn Shields & Austin Henderson

When an electron loses its partner, it creates a free radical. So is that free radical now potentially hazardous to your health?

By Michelle Konstantinovsky

Researchers are working on ways to engineer viruses to attack cancer cells, killing the disease without radiation, medicine or surgery. How do the viruses know what to kill?

By Josh Clark

It's all connected! Recent rodent research suggests that immune responses and social behavior may be more intertwined than we realized.

By Julia Layton

Dust traveling over the Atlantic from North Africa feeds both phytoplankton that makes the oxygen we breath and the bacteria that could kill us.

By Jesslyn Shields

Researchers are calling for a new "Noah's Ark" to store microbes that might one day be valuable.

By Chris Opfer

Scientists have found that ancient fossilized chlorophyll was dark red and purple in its concentrated form, which means that when diluted by water or soil, it would have lent a pink cast to earth and sea.

By Laurie L. Dove

HIV continues to be a major global public health issue, having claimed more than 35 million lives so far.

By Kevin Bonsor & Oisin Curran

Learn about weight gain and the processes going on in your cells.

By Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D.

Influenza, Ebola and COVID-19 are all viruses. Find out what a virus does to your body and how to decrease your chance of exposure.

By Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D. & Patrick J. Kiger

Nearly every cell in your body has the same DNA. It's the hereditary material located your cells' nucleus. But what does it do and why is it so important to all living beings?

By Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D. & Jennifer Walker-Journey

You've heard it on the lips of every newscaster and seen it in the pages of every newspaper and Web site: swine flu. Just how worried should we be about the 2009 version of the H1N1 virus?

By Molly Edmonds

Herd immunity means that after a certain percentage of a population is immune to a disease, the whole population is. This is usually achieved through vaccination but some are not convinced.

By Alia Hoyt & Molly Edmonds

Are you the first to complain when it's too hot or too cold at work? Extremophiles have news for you: Suck it up. These hardy microbes make most of us humans seem like whimpering Goldilocks, and studying them may tell us more than you might imagine.

By Jacob Silverman & Desiree Bowie

While HeLa cells have been star players in medical research for decades, the woman behind them remained in the shadows for years. Discover the amazing story of Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cells in this article.

By Shanna Freeman

Biofilms form when single microorganisms attach to a hydrated surface and undergo a "lifestyle switch." But why should we care about biofilms?

By Marianne Spoon

The journal "Nature" recently published a paper describing how a cell transplant had allowed blind mice to see again. What does this mean for humans?

By Tracy V. Wilson