Animals, from worms and sponges to jellyfish and whales, contain anywhere from a few thousand to tens of trillions of nearly genetically identical cells. Depending on the organism, these cells arrange ...

Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis occurred, where life emerged from non-life. Imagine a hot, watery mix of ...

Living organisms share an ancestor called the last universal common ancestor, or LUCA. LUCA is estimated to have lived ...

Stentor is a trumpet-shaped, single-celled organism that can grow up to 2 mm long. In its native habitat of ponds or lakes, Stento r attaches its slender end (called the holdfast) to leaves or twigs ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A light microscopy image shows the marine algae Braarudosphaera bigelowii, which is a potentially large evolutionary step. This ...

In a groundbreaking experiment, researchers have brought a mouse to life with the help of a single-celled organism that existed long before any multicellular animals walked the earth. Genetic research ...

One-celled organisms began influencing life once their descendants achieved multicellularity. Researchers once thought that this multicellularity transition was rather explosive, but it turns out that ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Andréa Morris reports on emergent intelligence in diverse systems. “Where are all the genetic cures?” asks Denis Noble, a ...

Life’s story may stretch further back than scientists once thought. Some genes found in nearly every organism today were already duplicated before all life shared a common ancestor. By tracking these ...

A dog learns to sit on command, a person hears and eventually tunes out the hum of a washing machine while reading … The capacity to learn and adapt is central to evolution and, indeed, survival.

While giving many benefits, aspects of modern society can also be harmful to our physical, mental, and cultural health. We can overcome many of these detriments if we better understand and express our ...

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- Humans like to think that being multicellular (and bigger) is a definite advantage, even though 80 percent of life on Earth consists of single-celled organisms – some thriving in ...