Our single-celled ancestor lived in a world without plants, animals or oxygen-rich oceans. Yet, this seemingly simple microorganism took the first steps toward complex life. From this ancestor emerged ...

In the oceans and on land, scientists are discovering rare, transitional organisms that bridge the gap between Earth’s simplest cells and today’s complex ones. By Carl Zimmer A flurry of new studies ...

John M. Archibald is in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4H7, Canada, and also at the Institute for Comparative Genomics, Dalhousie ...

From humans and dinosaurs to starfish and seagrass, every animal, plant, and fungus on Earth appears to trace its origins back to a single strange clan of microbes known as the Asgard archaea. In a ...

All cells need to sense and respond to their environment—to know when to activate genes, build proteins and carry out their basic functions. One of the most well-studied cellular responses is how they ...

In many submerged regions, murky mud shelters strange life-forms that seem to be the key to one of the biggest mysteries of life on Earth. These creatures belong to a domain of life called the archaea ...

A research team from the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague has discovered Solarion arienae, an extremely rare and morphologically unique unicellular eukaryote that sheds new light on ...

Cells are the basic building blocks of life—the smallest units that can do all the jobs a living thing needs. Most cells fit into two groups: prokaryotes and eukaryotes. The most significant ...

A new study provides unprecedented insights into the cellular architecture of over 200 species of plankton using ultrastructure expansion microscopy. Dudin had been working with this particular group ...

(Nanowerk News) A team of Chinese researchers led by Prof. GAO Caixia from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed two new genome editing ...

Everything alive is made up of cells, but not all cells are the same. Some are incredibly simple, while others are more complex and capable of supporting advanced life functions. Among the latter are ...

The United States is officially involved in the conflict between Iran and Israel. As a result, many are wondering what the term “sleeper cells” refers to since Donald Trump and his administration are ...