Prokaryotes are organisms whose cells lack a nucleus and other organelles. Prokaryotes are divided into two distinct groups: the bacteria and the archaea, which scientists believe have unique ...

Complex cellular life evolved from simpler organisms, and organisms with huge differences have similar evolutionary roots the further back one goes into the tree of life. Two of the three major ...

Just call them archaea (ar-kee-uh) - archaebacteria are no more. Archaea were once considered to be quite similar to bacteria, but these prokaryotes are just weird enough to be classified in their own ...

Let’s say you’ve discovered a new bacterium or archaea and want to give it a name so that it can be classified and placed on the appropriate branch of the tree of life. According to the International ...

In the beginning, there was boredom. Following the emergence of cellular life on earth, some 3.5 billion years ago, simple cells lacking a nucleus and other detailed internal structure dominated the ...

Eukaryotes are the category of organisms that include us. We have our DNA partitioned into a nucleus instead of just hanging out loose with other cellular components. Eukaryotes are thought to have ...

A new study challenges a popular scenario put forward to explain the arrival of the first eukaryotic organisms. In the beginning, there was boredom. Following the emergence of cellular life on earth, ...

When you get infected with a virus, some of the first weapons your body deploys to fight it were passed down to us from our microbial ancestors billions of years ago. According to new research from ...

According to a study published January 11 in Nature, this archaeon may have been related to the Asgard archaea—a pantheon of microbes named for Norse gods, including Lokiarchaeota, Thorarchaeota, ...

Now Fengbin “Jerry” Wang, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and colleagues in Paris and Virginia report that such nanowires, composed of a long chain of cytochrome proteins, appear to ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A Geobacter bacteria isolated from a contaminated ditch in Oklahoma has an unusual appendage — a long extracellular nanowire that can conduct electricity. The electron transport ...