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...

Neue Studie zeigt, dass Asgard-Archaeen sich aktiv fortbewegen können und liefern überraschende Hinweise auf die Evolution komplexer Zellen und des Lebens.

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...

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.

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...

A groundbreaking study hints at a hazy boundary between “life” and “non-life,” as well as two distinct origins of biology on Earth

In homologous recombination, DNA repair depends on recombinase filaments finding homologous templates on chromosomes whose topology is continually remodeled by replication and transcription. How dynam...

The emergence of the eukaryotes coincided with the diversification of histone proteins and their post-translational modifications by enzymes that constitute the core of eukaryotic chromatin. Yet the e...

Cellular metabolism is widely understood as an integrated network of redox reactions, energy conservation, and biosynthetic pathways. Here we show that across diverse prokaryotic lineages, loss of red...

What electron microscope images hint at, but can only be seen in videos: how 'Asgard' archaea move.

How a discovery in the 1970s changed the theory of the origin of complex life on earth.