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 ...

Who were our earliest ancestors? The answer could lie in a special group of single-celled organisms with a cytoskeleton similar to that of complex organisms, such as animals and plants. Ten years ago, ...

Sperm and egg cells, or gametes, are unusual. Egg cells are some of the largest cell types, and sperm are some of the smallest. In humans, these haploid cells come together to form diploid cells. It's ...

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 ...

The paper I. Turgeman-Grott et al., “Pervasive acquisition of CRISPR memory driven by inter-species mating of archaea can limit gene transfer and influence speciation,” Nat Microbiol, 4:177–86, 2019.