None of us would get on a plane that had its parts changed in mid-air, says Eve Marder, who has spent her career probing a very specific cluster of crustacean nerve cells. Yet we are all walking around undergoing a constant turnover of cellular parts, and so are the lobsters and crabs Marder studies.

Black smokers are deep-sea hydrothermal vents found in the ocean. Now scientists believe that they may host electroecosystems in which the primary producers use electric currents as their energy source.

New genetic insights into the plant rehydration process: this is why your plants don’t die after you forgot to water them.