Harada et al. describe an archaeon, recovered from a single marine plankton cell, whose 238-kb genome is the smallest known for the domain. It has lost nearly all metabolism but keeps the machinery to...

A coordinated sequence of RNA helicases and associated factors dismantles normal and defective spliceosome complexes to enable intron degradation and ensure accurate gene expression.

Technological advances over the past decade have enabled genome-wide mapping of chromatin organization across diverse organisms at unprecedented resolution. These studies have uncovered both conserve…

Anoxic live-cell imaging shows actin-dependent crawling motility and dynamic protrusions in Asgard archaea, providing insights into cellular innovations that may have contributed to eukaryotic evoluti...

Retrotransposons can infect neighboring cells using a mechanism that relies on a small fusogen-like protein rather than on the envelope protein that is typically required for infection.

Using bioinformatics, biochemistry, NMR, as well as the newly characterized enzyme ArmA from methanogenic archaea, we revised the existing knowledge on archaeal peptidoglycan structure. At the same ti...

The amoeba Incendiamoeba cascadensis demonstrates that eukaryotic life can withstand temperatures beyond what was thought possible and sheds light on molecular strategies for survival in extreme heat.

Researchers are racing to culture a menagerie of exotic organisms and finding lots of surprises along the way.

Cyclic transcription is a hallmark of the cell cycle. While transcriptional waves in eukaryotes are driven by oscillations in cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) activity, many archaea have an ordered cell ...

Many prokaryotes are diderms. They divide using an FtsZ division ring to simultaneously constrict physically coupled inner and outer membranes to form daughter cells with two membranes. Currently, onl...

Animal cells extensively remodel their cytoskeleton during differentiation and can notably switch between two major motility modes: flagellum-based swimming and actin-based crawling. We previously sho...

A genomic screen reveals homologues of ESCRT components in mirusviruses that infect unicellular aquatic eukaryotes.

CRISPR-associated transposons mediate RNA-guided DNA integration, but the molecular basis of transposase function remains poorly understood. Here, the authors uncover the mechanism of a highly active ...

Inside cells, DNA is intimately associated with proteins, forming chromatin. The protein constituents of chromatin vary across the tree of life: histones are the principal building blocks of chromatin...

Inside cells, DNA is intimately associated with proteins, forming chromatin. The protein constituents of chromatin vary across the tree of life: histones are the principal building blocks of chromatin...

Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) feature a branched chromatin architecture whose origin and function remain unknown. We found that NET branching is mediated by RAD51, a protein generating DNA jun...

Cellular organisms can be divided into two basic types of cells: the prokaryotic cells of Bacteria and Archaea and the eukaryotic cells. The rapidly expanding knowledge of the diversity and ultrastructure of prokaryotic cells has revealed cellular intricacies that warrant a critical reappraisal of the profundity of the prokaryote–eukaryote divide.

Thylakoid membranes are indispensable for oxygenic photosynthesis, yet the mechanisms that protect these membranes from photooxidative damage remai...

Photosymbioses, or associations between heterotrophs and photoautotrophs, are widespread and indispensable in today's ecosystems. The chloroplasts of algae and land plants, which are at the heart of m...

This study shows that the structural protein essential pyrenoid component 1 (EPYC1) and the enzyme Rubisco are sufficient to assemble into pyrenoid-like structures that are functionally active and sho...

Functional profiling of ∼200,000 genomic segments from vertebrate-infecting viruses uncovers RNA elements that boost gene expression by stabilizing mRNAs and enhancing translation, revealing the diversity of TENT4-dependent mixed tailing and identifying canonical poly(A) polymerase-mediated cytoplasmic polyadenylation, together expanding our understanding of post-transcriptional regulation and RNA therapeutic design.

This study introduces iChIP2, a low-input chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing method that profiles histone post-translational modifications (hPTMs) simultaneously across diverse eukar...

An ancient algae first spotted four decades ago will now join the collection of the Natural History Museum.

Aggregative multicellularity was key to the evolution of the multicellular animal genetic toolkit.