MIT researchers traced chemical fossils in ancient rocks back to the ancestors of today’s demosponges. A team of geochemists ...

Cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, occur worldwide in many varieties, including in single-cell form and in chains called filaments. While these tiny life forms can strongly influence many ...

Multicellular organisms (animals, plants, humans) all have the ability to methylate the cytosine base in their DNA. This process, a type of epigenetic modification, plays an important role in ...

In his laboratory at the University of Poitiers in France, Abderrazak El Albani contemplates the rock glittering in his hands. To the untrained eye, the specimen resembles a piece of golden tortellini ...

Fungi arose long before plants, shaping Earth with early soils and nutrient cycles. Their hidden legacy shows they may have prepared the world for life to flourish on land. Credit: Shutterstock ...

Researchers have captured the first clear view of the hidden architecture that helps shape a simple multicellular organism, showing how cells work together to build complex life forms. Volvox. The ...

As humans, we typically look at life and death as two sides of the same coin. However, some researchers believe there could be a "third state" between the two. One piece of evidence for this ...

The death of an organism does not spell the end for its cells, according to new research. Cells have been shown to continue to function even after the organism they originated from is deceased, often ...

Rotifer recovering from week-long cryptobiosis in the lab. Credit: Lyubov Shmakova. For 24,000 years, tiny creatures lay dormant, entombed in the frozen depths of Siberia’s permafrost. These ...

Funding: W.C.R. acknowledges support from the NIH (grant no. 5R35GM138030) and NSF (CAREER Grant no. 1845363), A.J.B. acknowledges support from the Human Frontiers Science Program grant (RGY0080/2020) ...

Scientists study ancient unicellular organism C. perkinsii to understand transition from single-cell to multicellular life. Research suggests C. perkinsii demonstrates early forms of multicellular ...