Our limited understanding of the metabolism of our microbial ancestor is a sizeable gap in our knowledge of how complex life originated. Resolving whether our closest microbial relatives had ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Modern eukaryotic cells have proteins that enable chromosome segregation during cell division, new discoveries shed light on their origin in simpler prokaryotic organisms. Modern nucleated (eukaryotic ...

ARLINGTON, Va.– According to a new report, complex cells like those in the human body probably resulted from the fusion of genomes from an ancient bacterium and a simpler microbe, Archaea, best known ...

Prokaryotes are ancient, simple forms of life that include bacteria and archaea. These cellular life forms lack membrane-bound organelles. Those organelles, which include the nucleus and the ...

Following the drive to understand and control bacteria, it’s becoming clear that our methods have changed the very organisms we aim to understand, increasing resistance to tried-and-true antimicrobial ...

Credit: COURTESY OF Jennifer M. Warner / Department of Biology, University of North Carolina-Charlotte" /> Credit: COURTESY OF Jennifer M. Warner / Department of Biology, University of North ...