Our single-celled ancestor lived in a world without plants, animals or oxygen-rich oceans. Yet, this seemingly simple microorganism took the first steps toward complex life. From this ancestor emerged ...

Around 1.7 billion years ago, eukaryotes—the building blocks of complex life—first appeared on Earth, and now scientists have ...

Scientists are trying to understand how complex life emerged on Earth about 2 billion years ago. Our microbial ancestors could be the key.

The origin of the nucleus remains hotly debated among scientists, but new imaging and genomic data are shedding light on this billion-year-old mystery.

A team led by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin has produced what may be the strongest evidence yet that the ...

Researchers investigating the origin of complex life on Earth appear to have solved a longstanding mystery at the heart of how animals, plants, and fungi evolved. To understand the conundrum, you must ...

Ancient microbes tied to our earliest ancestors could use oxygen, reshaping ideas about how complex life began on Earth.

Unlike prokaryotic cells, all eukaryotic cells have nuclei. Nuclei house most of a cell’s genetic information – much of it in the form of DNA – making a nucleus a sort of blueprint for building future ...

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has named Grant King, PhD, a Hanna H. Gray Fellow — investing up to $1.5 million for up to eight years to help King achieve his goal of running his own lab. He is ...

Genetics tools have advanced significantly in recent decades, and have allowed scientist to sequence all of the genetic ...