Why did multicellularity arise? Solving that mystery may help pinpoint life on other planets and explain the vast diversity and complexity seen on Earth today, from sea sponges to redwoods to human ...

Top row: co-first authors Ang Gao (left) and Krishna Shrinivas (right). Bottom row: co-senior authors Arup Chakraborty (left) and Phillip Sharp (right). A computational model developed by scientists ...

A major event in the evolution of organisms on earth was the development of complex, multicellular life forms made of eukaryotic cells, which are thought to have come from prokaryotic cells. Studies ...

Life and death are traditionally viewed as opposites. But the emergence of new multicellular life-forms from the cells of a ...

All multicellular creatures are descended from single-celled organisms. The leap from unicellularity to multicellularity is possible only if the originally independent cells collaborate. So-called ...

A new study by researchers at the University of Queensland is calling old ideas about evolution into question. The scientists used powerful genetic technologies to sequence every gene being expressed ...

As scientists delve deeper beneath the ocean’s surface, they find bizarre creatures that have adapted to harsh and extreme environments. Now comes a new one—the discovery of the first multicellular ...

Scaling up from one cell to many may have been a small step rather than a giant leap for early life on Earth. A single-celled organism closely related to animals controls its life cycle using a ...

This new research indicates that targeting of methylation on the adenine base in unicellular organisms could be a way in ...

Multicellular cyanobacteria do something strikingly sophisticated with their DNA, toggling key genes on and off as day turns ...

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 ...

Multicellular organisms (animals, plants, humans) all have the ability to methylate the cytosine base in their DNA. This ...