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When you flex a muscle in your arm, it’s not the muscle that’s shrinking, but the cells that comprise it. Each cell lining the muscle’s length has its own limited contractile ability, one driven by tiny motor and ratchet proteins that crumple up a cell and refuse to let it relax. Rather than being a single continuous muscular action, your ...

The important thing about Caenorhabditis elegans, also called a roundworm or nematode, is how simple it is. A mouse may be small, but it’s still a mammal, and composed of many billions of cells. Even a fruit fly is a relatively complex organism, and as scientists manipulate its genes they see all kinds of emergent properties arising from the incredible ...