Water covers around 70 per cent of our planet’s surface. It makes up 60 per cent of our body weight. Without a supply of the stuff, very few living things can survive for long. But, perhaps surprisingly, water is bad news for life. Was it conspicuously absent at the dawn of life on Earth? Image: szeke
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Carrying a copy of the “Alzheimer’s gene” doesn’t significantly raise a man’s risk of developing the disease. The gene does increase a woman’s risk, but women with one copy of the gene were as likely to develop the disease as men with no copies. Image: ACDbio
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Yeast-grown artemisinin is being hailed as a triumph for synthetic biology. It is touted as a backup source of the potent anti-malaria drug in case of shortfalls in traditional supplies from a plant called sweet wormwood. But the story isn’t that simple. Are the yeast in Bulgaria a one-off vanity project that will lead nowhere? The answer could soon be arriving on your dinner plate. Image: henna lion
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One of our closest long-lost relatives may never have existed. The fossils of Australopithecus sediba, which promised to rewrite the story of human evolution, may actually be the remains of two species jumbled together. Image: Lee Berger
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China now consumes nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined. And perhaps it always did: it seems coal was routinely burned 3500 years ago in what is now China – the earliest evidence we have for the practice. Image: Barras
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