Genetics tools have advanced significantly in recent decades, and have allowed scientist to sequence all of the genetic material they find in any sample. That has enabled researchers to discover giant ...

Billions of years ago, life on Earth made a leap from simple microbes to complex cells with nuclei and organelles. New research reveals that our archaeal ancestors already possessed advanced molecular ...

Tom has a master’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Oxford and his interests range from immunology and microscopy to the philosophy of science.View full profile Tom has a master’s degree ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: The first eukaryotes—the cells that form complex life—likely originated when two microscopic entities merged via a process called endosymbiosis, ...

A system once tied to DNA organization in cyanobacteria has evolved into a structure that shapes the cell itself. This shift ...

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 ...

In the oceans and on land, scientists are discovering rare, transitional organisms that bridge the gap between Earth’s simplest cells and today’s complex ones. By Carl Zimmer A flurry of new studies ...

Animals, from worms and sponges to jellyfish and whales, contain anywhere from a few thousand to tens of trillions of nearly genetically identical cells. Depending on the organism, these cells arrange ...

Duke researchers help reprogram immune cells inside the body, potentially expanding access to cancer therapies The following ...

Stem cells have great applications in regenerative medicine. While transcription factors traditionally dominate fate determination research, recent 3D genomics reveals chromatin topology’s critical ...