eLife authors answer questions about their life and work.

eLife is pleased to present a Special Issue to highlight recent advances in the mechanistic understanding of microbiome function.

eLife has published papers on many tropical diseases, including malaria, Ebola, leishmaniases, Dengue and African sleeping sickness.

The nature and extent of developmental variation seen between mouse strains and genetically identical individuals explain why the first upper molar evolves along preferred path in murine rodents.

A gain-of-function in a new chemical defense resulted in no trade-offs and and independent evolution between novel and ancestral defenses, suggesting low redundancy among different defensive chemicals.

The first genomic view of beetle luciferase evolution indicates evolutionary independence of luciferase between fireflies and click-beetles, and provide valuable datasets which will accelerate the discovery of new biotechnological tools.

AurkA is imported into mitochondria at interphase, and it induces organelle elongation and enhances ATP production when over-expressed.

A phylum-specific ATP synthase subunit is needed for proper mitochondrial function and stability of the complex in Toxoplasma gondii.

Killing their neighbors allows bacteria to steal genes, including antibiotic resistance genes, which we observed under a microscope, quantified, modeled, and predicted potentially guiding strategies to combat it.