Carl Zimmer blogs about his new book, Microcosm and this week focuses on E. coli and genetics.

President Obama yesterday nominated Francis S. Collins, a physician and scientist who helped guide the Human Genome Project to completion, to be the next director of the National Institutes of Health. Collins, 59, developed an important technique for identifying genes and went on to identify those involved in cystic fibrosis and ...

Researchers at the Technische Universität München have identified a metabolic step that could be a good weak point for new antibiotics to target. Just as Luke Skywalker targeted the exhaust-vent on the Death Star, antibiotics could disrupt this specific process and kill the microorganism.

DOE JGI Genome Biology head Nikos Kyrpides believes that science as a whole would benefit from the introduction of common standards for genomic data collection and analysis. In fact, he believes the lack of shared standards is currently hurting research, compromising data during critical procedures.