You know when you hear somebody start a sentence with, "There are two kinds of people..." and you think to yourself "Oh boy, here it comes." But what if I were to tell you that there are just two ...

In prokaryotes, the DNA (chromosome) is in contact with the cellular cytoplasm and is not in a housed membrane-bound nucleus. In eukaryotes, however, the DNA takes the form of compact chromosomes ...

While prokaryotic cells do not have membrane-bound structures, they do have distinct cellular regions (Figure 1). In prokaryotic cells, DNA bundles together in a region called the nucleoid. Primitive ...

THE CHEMICAL reactions on which life depends need a place to happen. That place is the cell. All the things which biology recognises as indisputably alive are either cells or conglomerations of cells ...

As a fundamental unit of life, the cell is central to all of biology. Better understanding how complex cells evolved and work promises new revelations in areas as diverse as cancer research and ...

A new study challenges a popular scenario put forward to explain the arrival of the first eukaryotic organisms. In the beginning, there was boredom. Following the emergence of cellular life on earth, ...

The origin of eukaryotes is considered one of the greatest enigmas in biology: according to current doctrine, two prokaryotes, a so-called Asgard archaeon and a bacterium, are believed to have merged.

In the beginning, there was boredom. Following the emergence of cellular life on earth, some 3.5 billion years ago, simple cells lacking a nucleus and other detailed internal structure dominated the ...

Previously, chemists have managed to create artificial cell walls and developed synthetic DNA to produce self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cells. Now, for the first time, researchers have used ...