eLife is a unique collaboration between funders and practitioners of research to communicate influential discoveries in the life and biomedical sciences in the most effective way. It is launched with support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Wellcome Trust, and the Max Planck Society in November 2012. eLife represents a new model of scientific publishing, designed to meet the needs of scientists in life sciences and biomedicine in a better way. This includes free, immediate, online access to scientific articles; rapid, fair, and constructive review; and innovation in content presentation – in short, a journal for scientists, run by scientists. Initial decisions are made by eLife’s senior editors, and, if a submission is selected for further assessment, full peer review is overseen by eLife’s 175-member board of reviewing editors. The reviewing editor and reviewers consult once peer review comments are submitted, and provide a consolidated list of instructions to authors – eliminating unnecessary and time-consuming rounds of revision.
An analysis of hoverfly flight shows that wing design, not faster flapping, enables the smallest species to generate enough lift to fly.
Plants & Animals
Sep 30, 2025
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For decades, scientists have known that bacteria can exchange genetic material, in a process called horizontal gene transfer. This allows bacteria to rapidly evolve new traits, such as antibiotic resistance. A new study, ...
Evolution
Sep 25, 2025
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Biological sex is usually described in simple binary terms: male or female. This works well for germ cells (sperm versus eggs), but for other body organs it is of little help.
Evolution
Sep 18, 2025
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Like its namesake, Janelia's GENIE Project Team makes wishes come true. Luckily for biologists, this genie doesn't grant just three requests.
Biotechnology
Sep 17, 2025
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Hamilton's rule, introduced in the 1960s, says that altruism—helping others at your own expense—can evolve when the benefits to others, multiplied by how closely related they are to you, outweigh the cost to yourself. ...
Mathematics
Sep 15, 2025
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117
Anthropologist Lee Berger and his team at the University of the Witwatersrand, working within the Rising Star cave system in South Africa, have published their most extensive evidence yet of deliberate burial by Homo naledi, ...
Many corals and sponges form skeletons that support and shape their bodies. Whereas biomineralization—the formation of these skeletons—has been intensively studied in corals, the main ecosystem engineers of today's hyperdiverse ...
Evolution
Sep 9, 2025
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Researchers have described a large set of previously unrecognized enzymatic domains—named the Lipocone superfamily—and outlined their evolutionary pathway from bacterial defense molecules to key players in human development.
Molecular & Computational biology
Sep 9, 2025
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Corals may lack eyes, but they are far from blind. These delicate animals sense light in ways that continue to amaze and inspire the scientific community.
Ecology
Sep 5, 2025
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Studying the process of brain formation illuminates just how much of development is a series of tiny miracles. Only a few weeks after a human egg is fertilized, a sheet of cells called the neural plate widens, stretches and ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 21, 2025
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