Single-celled archaea microbes pack their DNA into flexible coils that expand and stretch much like a Slinky does. This kind of molecular gymnastics had never been seen before in other organisms and ...

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 ...

All multicellular living beings carry an unimaginably large number of microorganisms in and on their bodies. The microbiome, i.e. the totality of these microorganisms, forms a unit together with the ...

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 ...

In the late 1970s, a new branch was added to the tree of life, and archaea joined bacteria and eukarya, as domain classifications. Archaea and bacteria are both simple forms of cells called ...

All multicellular organisms harbor an unimaginably large number of microorganisms in and on their bodies. The microbiome, i.e. the totality of these microbes, forms a functional, symbiotic unit with ...

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 ...

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 ...