Chromosphaera perkinsii is a single-celled species discovered in 2017 in marine sediments around Hawaii. The first signs of its presence on Earth have been dated at over a billion years, well before ...

The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) — a class of small RNAs with a role in the regulation of gene expression — had until now been found only in ...

A recent study by Ruibao Li and Jennah Dharamshi published in Nature may help us understand the beginnings of animal evolution billions of years ago. These findings are the result of a collaboration ...

Images of the multicellular development of the ichthyosporean Chromosphaera perkinsii, a close cousin of animals. In red, the membranes and in blue the nuclei with their DNA. The image was obtained ...

Scientists at Nagoya University in Japan have identified the genes that allow an organism to switch between living as single cells and forming multicellular structures. This ability to alternate ...

The diversity of unicellular eukaryotes covered in the study, with their nucleus (blue) and microtubule cytoskeleton (magenta) stained. These organisms are so distantly related to each other as they ...

At some point, organisms changed and grew from a single cell into one made up of many cells. But how that happened is not well understood. New work by graduate candidate Jonathan Featherston of the ...

Scaling up from one cell to many may have been a small step rather than a giant leap for early life on Earth. A single-celled organism closely related to animals controls its life cycle using a ...

A ubiquitous but little-known marine organism, the choanoflagellate, is the last one-celled ancestor of humans and provides insight into how cells learned to assemble into multicelled organisms. The ...

If you look at the world around you now - at the plants, animals, and the people around you, it's easy to take for granted our multicellular existence. Life didn't always look like this. In fact, way ...