Eukaryotes—the building blocks of complex life—appeared on Earth 1.7 billion years ago, and now scientists have solved a ...

Ten years ago, nobody knew that Asgard archaea even existed. In 2015, however, researchers examining deep-sea sediments discovered gene fragments that indicated a new and previously undiscovered form ...

Archaea—one of the three primary domains of life alongside bacteria and eukaryotes—are often overlooked and sometimes mistaken for bacteria due to their single-celled nature and lack of a nucleus. Yet ...

An artist’s depiction of an Asgard archaeon, based on cryo-electron tomography data: the cell body and appendages feature thread-like skeletal structures, similar to those found in complex cells with ...

Complex cells are thought to be the result of a union between two ancient microorganisms, but scientists have long been ...

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 ...

For decades, scientists have believed that complex life began when two very different microbes joined forces, eventually ...

The newly described archaeon Sukunaarchaeum mirabile carries the smallest known genome among Archaea and blurs life’s limits.

There are few hard and fast rules in the study of life, but perhaps the closest we get is the central dogma of molecular biology: DNA is transcribed to RNA, which gets translated into proteins. The ...

All modern multicellular life — all life that any of us regularly see — is made of cells with a knack for compartmentalization. Recent discoveries are revealing how the first eukaryote got its start.