How is it possible to move in the desired direction without a brain or nervous system? Single-celled organisms apparently manage this feat without any problems: for example, they can swim towards food ...

Researchers have reported the first experimental evidence of epigenetics in the single-celled organisms known as archaea. The simplicity of archaea -- combined with the fact that their cells resemble ...

Researchers have stumbled on a surprising aphrodisiac for a single-celled organism: a protein secreted by a bacterium. They suggest it’s the first time that bacteria have been found to have a hand in ...

Maddy has a degree in biochemistry from the University of York and specializes in reporting on health, medicine, and genetics. Maddy has a degree in biochemistry from the University of York and ...

Schematic evolutionary tree of the 5 microbial species included in the study. From left to right: Trimastix marina, Paratrimastix pyriformis, Blattamonas nauphoetae, Streblomastix strix, and ...

As creatures made up of trillions of cells, it’s easy for us to look down on single-celled organisms, but new research from Harvard suggests that some of them may be capable of more complex ...

The discovery could improve scientists’ ability to explore and answer questions about epigenetic processes in humans. Through epigenetics, Sophie Payne, Paul Blum and colleagues demonstrated that ...

Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/4466393/4466394" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player ...

[Matt] Dig into your local pond, and you just might find one of the strangest, most mysterious organisms on Earth. Even here, smack in the middle of San Francisco, they're everywhere. What's that ...

Single-celled organisms don’t need sex. They exchange DNA segments. They can even select particularly useful bits to exchange. Only multicellular organisms are stuck with original DNA when cloning; ...