Life’s leap from single-celled to multicellular organisms marks a pivotal moment in evolutionary history. This transformation laid the foundation for the complex life forms we see today. By studying ...

A team of scientists, led by the University of Sheffield in the UK and Boston College in the U.S., has found a microfossil in the Scottish Highlands which contains two distinct cell types and could be ...

Cells can evolve specialized functions under a much broader range of conditions than previously thought, according to a study. Cells can evolve specialised functions under a much broader range of ...

Life and death are traditionally viewed as opposites. However, the emergence of new multicellular life forms from the cells of a dead organism introduces a “third state” that lies beyond the ...

One-celled organisms began influencing life once their descendants achieved multicellularity. Researchers once thought that this multicellularity transition was rather explosive, but it turns out that ...

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 ...

Researchers find that oxygenation of Earth's surface is key to the evolution of large, complex multicellular organisms. If cells can access oxygen, they get a big metabolic benefit. However, when ...

How do living organisms that lack a brain or nerve cells make decisions? In a new study published in May 2021 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America ...

How do living organisms that lack a brain or nerve cells make decisions? In a new study published in May 2021 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America ...

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 ...