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 ...

Some single-celled organisms are known to transition to multicellularity during their lifetimes, usually either by cloning themselves or when many similar cells come together to form a larger ...

Scientists are conducting a long-term experiment on evolution to investigate how single-celled organisms could evolve into multicellular lifeforms. After thousands of generations, their yeast grew ...

Over 3,000 generations of laboratory evolution, researchers watched as their model organism, 'snowflake yeast,' began to adapt as multicellular individuals. In new research, the team shows how ...

Scientists at Nagoya University in Japan have identified the genes that allow an organism to switch between living as single cells and forming multicellular structures. This ability to alternate ...

Researchers have discovered a mechanism steering the evolution of multicellular life. They identified how altered protein folding drives multicellular evolution. Researchers have discovered a ...

The origin of organisms with complex cells, known as eukaryotes, is one of the most crucial parts of life’s evolutionary story. All animals, plants, and fungi are eukaryotes, and if complex cells had ...

The sun has just set on a quiet mudflat in Australia’s Northern Territory; it’ll set again in another 19 hours. A young moon looms large over the desolate landscape. No animals scurry in the waning ...

Prokaryotes are ancient, simple forms of life that include bacteria and archaea. These cellular life forms lack membrane-bound organelles. Those organelles, which include the nucleus and the ...

The design of synthetic developmental programs for multicellular mammalian systems is a cornerstone of synthetic biology. The programs hinge on the construction of gene regulatory circuits that ...