The world's unsolved problems
993 open questions across 14 fields, gathered from Wikipedia. Pick one and start thinking.
Showing all 993 problems · surprise me
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Origin of sexual reproduction
What were the fundamental selective forces responsible for the origin of sexual reproduction?
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Maintenance of sexual reproduction
What are the fundamental selective forces maintaining sexual reproduction?
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Origins of viruses (Virus World).
Exactly how and when did different groups of viruses originate?
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Morphology problem.
How are neural tissues formed in specific ways in different species? The formation of neural tissues in a certain way is necessary for the formation of certain goal-directed behavior for certain species. Developmental psychobiology posed this question...
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Development and evolution of the brain.
How and why did the brain evolve? What are the molecular determinants of individual brain development?
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Origin of Eukaryotes (Symbiogenesis).
How and why did cells combine to form the eukaryotic cell? Did one or more random events lead to the first eukaryotic cells, or can the formation of eukaryotic cells be explained by physical and biological principles? How did the mitochondria's mitosis...
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Last universal common ancestor.
What were the characteristics of the Last Universal Common Ancestor of Archaea and Bacteria?
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The lipid divide
How did archaea end up using membrane glycerophospholipids of the opposite chirality compared to bacteria? Why do eukaryotes have bacteria-type membrane lipids?
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Biological homochirality
What is the origin of homochirality in living organisms? In biological organisms, amino acids appear almost exclusively in the left-handed form and sugars in the right-handed form. Homochirality is an obvious characteristic of life on Earth, yet...
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What do all the unknown proteins do?
Two decades since the first eukaryotes were sequenced, the "biological role" of around 20% of proteins are still unknown. Many of these proteins are conserved across most eukaryotic species and some are conserved in bacteria, indicating a role fundamental for life.
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Determinants of cell size.
How do cells determine what size to grow to before dividing?
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Golgi apparatus.
In cell theory, what is the exact transport mechanism by which proteins travel through the Golgi apparatus?
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Mechanism of action of drugs.
The mechanisms of action of many drugs including lithium, thalidomide, and ketamine are not completely understood.
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Protein folding.
What is the folding code? What is the folding mechanism? Can the native structure of a protein be predicted from its amino acid sequence? Is it possible to predict the secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of a polypeptide sequence based solely on...
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Enzyme kinetics
Why do some enzymes exhibit faster-than-diffusion kinetics?
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RNA folding problem
Is it possible to accurately predict the secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of a polyribonucleic acid sequence based on its sequence and environment?
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Protein design
Is it possible to design highly active enzymes de novo for any desired reaction?
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Biosynthesis
Can desired molecules, natural products or otherwise, be produced in high yield through biosynthetic pathway manipulation?
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What is the mechanism of allosteric transitions of proteins? The concerted and sequential models have been hypothesised but neither has…
What is the mechanism of allosteric transitions of proteins? The concerted and sequential models have been hypothesised but neither has been verified.
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What are the endogenous ligands of orphan receptors?
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What substance is endothelium-derived hyperpolarizing factor?
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Mechanism of Golgi's method
Why does this specific method stain nerve tissues? Why does it only color a random portion of the cells?
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Why does biological aging occur?
There are a number of hypotheses as to why senescence occurs including those that it is programmed by gene expression changes and that it is the accumulative damage of biological structures, particularly damage to DNA.
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How do organs grow to the correct shape and size?
How are the final shape and size of organs so reliably formed? These processes are in part controlled by the Hippo signaling pathway.
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Can developing biological systems tell the time?
To an extent, this appears to be the case, as shown by the CLOCK gene.
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Star jelly. A complete explanation about its origins is still lacking.
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Forest rings. The origin of forest rings is not known, despite several mechanisms for their creation having been proposed. Such hypotheses…
Forest rings. The origin of forest rings is not known, despite several mechanisms for their creation having been proposed. Such hypotheses include radially growing fungus, buried kimberlite pipes, trapped gas pockets, and meteorite impact craters.
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Handedness
It is unclear how handedness develops, what purpose it serves, why right-handedness is far more common, and why left-handedness exists.
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Laughter
While it is generally accepted that laughing evolved as a form of social communication, the exact neurobiological process that leads humans to laugh is not well understood.
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Yawning
It is yet to be established what the biological or social purpose of yawning is.
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Data last refreshed 2026-10-20 03:01 UTC.