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

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 ...

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

The story of life’s beginnings gets stranger when you look closely at viruses. These tiny entities seem to sit at the edge of ...

Eukaryotes—the building blocks of complex life—appeared on Earth 1.7 billion years ago, and now scientists have solved a longstanding riddle about their origin.

The molecular building blocks that make up the cells of humans, animals and plants so sophisticated appear to be older than scientists previously ...

Every second, hundreds to thousands of molecules move through thousands of nuclear pores in each of your cells. A new high-definition view reveals the machine in action.

A giant DNA virus pulled from a Japanese freshwater pond is forcing scientists to rethink how complex cells first acquired their defining feature: the nucleus. Named ushikuvirus, the newly ...

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.

Research suggests that consciousness could extend far beyond just humans—every cellular creature in the universe, no matter how big or small, could be conscious, too. Studies show that single-cell ...

In the evolutionary history of life, the ability of a cell to separate its inner world from the external environment was an ...