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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

Scientists have found further evidence to support the idea that the primary two domains of life, the Archaea and Bacteria, are separated by a long phylogenetic tree branch and therefore distantly ...

An elusive marine microbe, once known only by its DNA, has finally been cultured in the lab and could grant hints as to how eukaryotic life originated, researchers reported August 8 in a preprint ...

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 ...

Viruses typically aren’t considered ‘alive,’ as many core biological functions are outsourced to their hosts. But a newly discovered organism appears to straddle the line between virus and cell. Like ...