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...

Asgard archaeal mini microtubules suggest an archaeal origin of eukaryotic microtubules.

In 1977, Woese and colleagues revealed Archaea as a distinct domain of life. Building on this insight, the discovery of Asgard archaea has strengthened the view that many hallmarks of eukaryotic cell…

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The emergence of cell compartmentalization depends on membrane fission to create the endomembrane compartments. In eukaryotes, membrane fission is commonly executed by ESCRT-III, a protein complex con...

Genomic data reveal the complexity of egg mimicry evolution in cuckoos

Cells must coordinate DNA segregation with cytokinesis to ensure that each daughter cell inherits a complete genome. Here, we explore how DNA segregation and division are mechanistically coupled in ar...

Cells must coordinate DNA segregation with cytokinesis to ensure that each daughter cell inherits a complete genome. Here, we explore how DNA segregation and division are mechanistically coupled in ar...

Asgard archaea have two ESCRT-III subunits with the conserved traits that drive stepwise membrane remodeling in eukaryotes.

The surface layer or “S-layer” is a planar lattice of glycosylated proteins that coats a wide range of archaea and bacteria instead of a classical cell wall or capsular polysaccharides, insulating the...