Fentanyl has become a primary cause of the opioid overdose epidemic in the past decade. But what is it about this drug that's so dangerous? There's more to the story than meets the eye.



If you’re ever in the position...

Sponges might not look like particularly complex animals, but they've had billions of years to evolve their own special systems. And one of those systems might involve sending messages through their body in the form of light.

Why do we love the smell of something like gasoline that provides no clear evolutionary adaptation for us? Here are the psychological and chemical reasons that some researchers have suggested.

When someone gets a PET scan to detect tumors and how far a cancer has spread, that machine is actually detecting sugar. Because cancer has a sweet tooth, and this phenomenon, called the Warburg effect, may help us develop new cancer...

Researchers have identified the processes that cause gray hair and have done experiments to reverse it. And believe it or not, we've had some of these options for decades.

We use chemotherapy because it works, but no one has ever come home from chemo treatment and gone "That was fun!" Let's look at the new targeted therapies and personalized treatments for cancer that doctors are developing for clinical use.

Sometimes, major injury causes blood loss that results in improper clotting, or coagulopathy. Some researchers think a compound used in perfume to create jasmine fragrances could help save these patients.

You might know that chickenpox and shingles are both caused by the same virus, varicella zoster. Here's why the symptoms, and even the vaccines, are different the second time around.

HPV isn't the only virus that causes cancer, but it's one of the best at it. Here's what we've learned about this supervillain of a pathogen, and how to stop it.

Jellyfish aren't the most nutritious animals in the ocean. Yet sea turtles and many other organisms get their nutrition from almost nothing else. Here's why they don't totally starve to death.

Join the Amoeba Sisters on this introduction to the human Skeletal System! This video first introduces several types of skeletal systems found in different organisms before focusing on the human endoskeleton. Then, this video takes a...

Explore the four biomolecules and their importance for organisms and the structure and function of their cells! This 2023 UPDATED Biomolecules Amoeba Sisters video has some more detail and improved art from the 2016 Amoeba Sisters...

Join the Amoeba Sisters in exploring some general animal characteristics, major vocabulary used in classifying animals (such as symmetry, protostome vs deuterostome, cephalization, and coelom), and take a general tour of 9 major animal...

Quick Questions explains why, when it comes right down to it, there are really only eight kinds of people in the world.

Right now, experts say a vaccine for COVID-19 is a year or more away. But as far away as it sounds, it’s only within the realm of possibility because scientists are speeding up the vaccine development process in surprising ways.

Plants may not seem like they live the most exciting lives, but two new papers published this week point to different types of plants that are actually very cunning and manipulative. One, the parasitic dodder, steals both nutrients and...

There’s been some big news in neuron science this week as individuals suffering paralysis regain mobility and music might have a secret that gets us to dance.

Researchers have found ancient communities of microbes that have been buried deep, for a hundred million years! This discovery might be the oldest living thing on Earth, and could even expand the search for life on other planets.

You’re probably aware that your blood can be A, B, AB or O, but it turns out that blood types can get a lot more complicated than that! *We made a mistake in the credits of this video: The writer of this episode was Alane Lim.

What on earth is a xenophyophore? It's a single-celled organism that unlike what you might think is NOT microscopically small. In fact, these ocean dwellers are a little heftier than that! Learn all about them in this new episode of...

Carbs are pinned to be the villains in many diets, but those poor guys are just misunderstood.

Hank profiles this year's Nobel laureates in science, whose achievements have helped us understand questions as small as how our cells transport materials, and as big as why matter exists at all.

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Forget your Hans Grubers, Lord Voldemorts, and Hannibal Lecters. It’s time to meet some real supervillains. They’re called retroviruses, and they actually change their host cell’s DNA.