'Dark proteome' survey reveals thousands of new human genes.

Database confirms that overlooked segments of the genome code for a multitude of tiny proteins.

Effort to sequence all complex life ramps up.

Still looking for funds, Earth BioGenome Project has compiled 3000 eukaryotic genomes.

Gut microbe may ward off altitude sickness.

Finding adds to evidence that one set of gut bacteria has diverse benefits.

When the Mediterranean dried to a salty crust, life was devastated.

Tens of thousands of fossils detail the sea's dramatic loss and eventual rebound.

The global war on island rats.

Invasive rodents wreak havoc on island wildlife. How we learned to fight back.

How the Three Sisters shrug off pests.

Crops such as maize, beans, and squash can team up, but the mix matters.

Did bold fish spark Lake Tanganyika's diversity?

A gene mutation tied to exploratory behavior may have jump-started the evolution of hundreds of cichlid species.

Native lizards taught to avoid toxic toads by released toadlets.

Exposing monitor lizards to thousands of young cane toads helped them survive once the adult toads invaded.

U.K. boosts digitization of museum specimens.

London's Natural History Museum gets nearly $200 million to scan country's collections.

Massive RNA sequencing effort proposed.

U.S. plan would harness the "RNome" for medicine and more-but funding is uncertain.

Surprise RNA paints colorful patterns on butterfly wings.

Understudied means of regulating genes is likely widespread in butterflies-and perhaps other animals.

Diet explains Serengeti grazers' predictable migration.

Each species' dining habits set the table for the next wave.

Pollution disrupts nighttime pollination by degrading scents.

Nitrate radicals, a common pollutant, break down the cues nocturnal insects follow to find nectar sources.

Tiny fossils upend timeline of multicellular life.

Eukaryotes organized into multicellular forms 1.6 billion years ago.

Nocturnal habits may help animals survive crises.

After ancient extinctions, survivors switched to day shifts, study of fish suggests.

Fern proteins show promise against crop pests.

These and other ancient plants may provide alternatives to chemical insecticides.

Global algal outbreaks are crowding out corals.

Reefs already stressed by bleaching are being smothered by crust-forming red algae.

Mountain mice break altitude record for mammalian life.

How rodents survive on summits is a mystery.

AI excels at name that smell.

Neural network predicts odors from chemical structures.

Stress responders.

Polyploid cells, which have extra copies of their genomes, may help tissues respond to injuries and species survive cataclysms.

Wandering seeds.

Millennia before Europeans arrived in Australia, humans helped shape the distribution of the continent's plants.