BMC Biology

What have pathogens done to - and for - us?

The latest piece in our “In the Light of Evolution” series – a Q&A from Francois Balloux and Lucy van Dorp on our relationship with pathogens throughout history

What makes us human? – “In the Light of Evolution”

Katherine Pollard and Lucía Franchini review the role of non-coding genomic regions in human evolution – and challenges linking diverged sequences to uniquely human biology

An olfactory channel with dual specificity for sex and food

In a research article, Peter Witzgall and colleagues study the role of an olfactory channel that they discovered - with dual affinity to sex and food odorant - in long-range communication in Drosophila

Seeing with clarity - "New Tools for Neurobiology"

In a Q&A from our “New Tools for Neurobiology” series, Viviana Gradinaru and colleagues cover how optogenetics and tissue clearing can shine a light on intact biological systems

Collections’ Highlights

From our “New Tool for Neurobiology” series - a Methodology article from Kocks, Rajewsky et al on the preparation of cells for Drop-seq in an unperturbed state.

Featured Review

How driving endonuclease genes can be used to combat pests and disease vectors

H. Charles J. Godfray, Ace North and Austin Burt

Published on: 11 September 2017

Aims and scope

BMC Biology is the flagship biology journal of the BMC series, pioneer of open access publishing. Our scope includes research and methodology articles, review, Q&A and comment, across all of biology and with a publication policy that combines selection for special interest and importance with a commitment to serving authors well.

In response to widespread frustration with delays to publication through iterative reviewing, we operate a re-review opt out policy whereby authors can choose whether reviewers see their revisions (see our Editorial: Q&A: Re-review opt-out and painless publishing). For those papers that we cannot publish, a broad portfolio of subject-specific sister journals and portable peer review policy allows us to help authors find the right journal for their papers with a minimum of delay.