science

In 1976, researchers studying plant viruses found something strange. Some viral RNA molecules weren't linear chains with two ends—they were closed loops. Circles. The RNA's 3' end was covalently bonded to its 5' end, forming a continuous ring. This was interesting but seemed

You have two genomes. One sits in the nucleus of every cell—about 3 billion base pairs spread across 23 chromosome pairs, inherited from both parents, encoding roughly 20,000 genes. This is the genome everyone talks about. The one 23andMe analyzes. The one that carries most of your hereditary

Right now, as you read this sentence, your body is producing about 40 kilograms of ATP. Not over your lifetime. Not per year. Per day. Every single day, you synthesize roughly your body weight in adenosine triphosphate—the molecule that powers nearly every energy-requiring process in your cells. You don&

In 1967, Lynn Margulis submitted a paper to fifteen journals. Fourteen rejected it. The fifteenth, the Journal of Theoretical Biology, finally published it—and it became one of the most important papers in the history of biology. Her claim was outrageous: mitochondria, the power-generating organelles in every animal, plant, and

In the 1920s, Otto Warburg noticed something strange about tumors. Cancer cells were consuming glucose at an astonishing rate—far more than normal cells. And they were fermenting it to lactate, even when oxygen was plentiful. This made no biochemical sense. Fermentation yields only 2 ATP per glucose. Oxidative phosphorylation

Your cells are eating themselves right now. Not all of themselves—just the damaged parts. The broken organelles. The misfolded proteins. The accumulated debris that would otherwise gum up the works. This process is called autophagy, from the Greek for "self-eating." And when cells specifically target damaged mitochondria