Archaea have emerged as crucial players in molecular biology, evolution, and ecology. Recent breakthroughs, notably the ...

Sperm and egg cells, or gametes, are unusual. Egg cells are some of the largest cell types, and sperm are some of the smallest. In humans, these haploid cells come together to form diploid cells. It's ...

Scientists have been trying to learn more about archaea since these microbes were discovered in the 1970s. Their DNA is not contained in a nucleus, so they are a type of prokaryote, and were initially ...

As bacteria become increasingly resistant to antibiotics and other antibacterials, there is a growing need for alternatives. In a study published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, Tobias ...

A parasite that not only feeds of its host, but also makes the host change its own metabolism and thus biology. Microbiologists have shown this for the very first time in a specific group of parasitic ...

There are few hard and fast rules in the study of life, but perhaps the closest we get is the central dogma of molecular biology: DNA is transcribed to RNA, which gets translated into proteins. The ...

Every summer from 2013 to 2015, Dimitry Sorokin waded into the shallow, briny, alkaline lakes of Siberia’s Kulunda Steppe. Pale carbonate minerals crusted the pools’ edges, where lambs, too young to ...

Ten years ago, nobody knew that Asgard archaea even existed. In 2015, however, researchers examining deep-sea sediments discovered gene fragments that indicated a new and previously undiscovered form ...

Archaea are often mistaken as bacteria, given that both are small, single-cell organisms. However, archaea are as genetically different from bacteria as humans are from bacteria. While archaea are ...

Two pioneers of twentieth century biology passed away during the past decade, Wolfram Zillig in April 2005 and Carl Woese in December 2012. Among several other accomplishments, Woese has been ...

Life is not possible without nitrogen. There are many ways for organisms to acquire nitrogen. For example, humans eat proteins for their high nitrogen content. Most microorganisms take up nitrogen ...