In the May 15th issue of Genes & Development, an international collaboration of researchers, led by Dr. Yijun Qi (National Institute of Biological Sciences, China), report on their discovery of ...

Unicellular organisms show surprising complexity In a paper appearing in Nature Genetics, researchers discover that in more "primitive" unicellular organisms, both the adenine and the cytosine bases ...

The origin of eukaryotes is considered one of the greatest enigmas in biology: according to current doctrine, two prokaryotes, a so-called Asgard archaeon and a bacterium, are believed to have merged.

Images of the multicellular development of the ichthyosporean Chromosphaera perkinsii, a close cousin of animals. In red, the membranes and in blue the nuclei with their DNA. The image was obtained ...

A team of scientists has discovered the fossil of an organism with two distinct cell types that is likely the oldest of its kind ever recorded -- revealing multicellularity perhaps 400 million years ...

Metacaspases, ancestral homologues of the caspase family, are pivotal cysteine proteases found in a wide range of unicellular organisms, including yeasts, algae, and phytoplankton. These enzymes ...

The origin of animal multicellularity is one of the major evolutionary transitions in the history of life. The identification and phylogenetic classification of the closest unicellular relatives of ...

A globally distributed single-celled organism that occurs in harmful algal blooms has been found to exhibit an unusual organisation of photosynthesis. Researchers have taken a closer look at the ...