Today we know pathogens -- viruses, bacteria, and certain other microbes -- are responsible for many diseases. But linking specific diseases to the microbes that cause them has been surprisingly tricky, and some research practices lead...

The incredible chemical weapon-making abilities of fungi, bacteria, and plants have created a diverse array of compounds that are useful to humans.

The UN predicts that antimicrobial resistance will be our biggest killer by 2050. "That should really scare the hell out of all of us," says bioprocess engineer Leon Marchal. He's working on an urgently needed solution: transforming the...

An average teaspoon of ocean water contains five million bacteria and fifty million viruses -- and yet we are just starting to discover how these "invisible engineers" control our ocean's chemistry. At TEDxMonterey, Melissa Garren sheds...

What if you could take a smell selfie, a smelfie? What if you had a lipstick that caused plants to grow where you kiss? Ani Liu explores the intersection of technology and sensory perception, and her work is wedged somewhere between...

In this episode, we looked at food engineering. We explored how food’s capacity to spoil makes it a unique challenge from an engineering viewpoint. We saw how many branches of engineering come into play to process ingredients, ensure...

Oops! You drop your precious midnight snack on the floor! You just picked it up really quick, like less than five seconds, so it is ok to eat, right? But is the 5-second rule really legit?

We've found a microbe that might someday protect us from malaria parasites, and bees might have help with their jobs soon, thanks to bubble pollination!

Squeaks and Jessi made a new friend, Cassie the puppy! They gave her a bath after playing in the mud, but now she smells even worse than before! Why do wet dogs smell so bad?!

Newly described wormlike fossils dating back over half a billion years might be our oldest ancestors, and researchers have mapped and visualized the physical structure of the microscopic communities growing on human tongues!

Dr. Emmett Chappelle developed a test to find living microbes on other planets, and while it hasn't yet been used to find life amongst the stars, we've found many applications for it here on Earth

Plants are finding their ways into caves, and it's all our fault.

Massive amounts of dust manage to travel all the way across the ocean, creating some powerful and surprising global effects!

As we walk through our daily environments, we're surrounded by exotic creatures that are too small to see with the naked eye. We usually imagine these microscopic organisms, or microbes, as asocial cells that float around by themselves....

Trinidad's Pitch Lake is a huge, oily, and filled with millions of tons of asphalt. It may not sound like a great place to live, but the lake is teeming with microscopic life! And learning more about these organisms could give us insight...

Scientists have found fossils that show life appearing on Earth much earlier than we thought. Meanwhile, could there be a new fundamental force?

This Valentine’s Day, send a little love to your bacterial buddies! Our microbes keep us healthy, but some bacteria give their animal companions superpowers, like immunity to poison, or even invisibility!

We humans couldn’t live without our gut microbes, but not all animals rely on microscopic digestive communities like we do. And understanding why these animals ditched their microbial partners can teach us a lot about the costs and...

Our bodies and homes are covered in microbes -- some good for us, some bad for us. As we learn more about the germs and microbes who share our living spaces, TED Fellow Jessica Green asks: Can we design buildings that encourage happy,...

When astronauts go into space, they're not always going alone.

While we like to imagine little green men, it's far more likely that life on other planets will be microbial. Planetary scientist Nathalie Cabrol takes us inside the search for microbes on Mars, a hunt which counterintuitively leads us...

We tend to think of fossils as dinosaur bones or petrified wood, but what if we told you that there's a lot we can learn from fossilized waste?

Every environment on the planet -- from forested mountaintops to scorching deserts and even the human gut -- has a microbiome that keeps it healthy and balanced. Ecologist Steven Allison explores how these extraordinarily adaptable,...

Should we keep the outdoors out of hospitals? Ecologist and TED Fellow Jessica Green has found that mechanical ventilation does get rid of many types of microbes, but the wrong kinds: the ones left in the hospital are much more likely to...