For billions of years after the origin of life, the only living things on Earth were tiny, primitive cells resembling today’s bacteria. But then, more than 1.5 billion years ago, something remarkable ...

Why have bacteria never evolved complex multicellularity? A new hypothesis suggests that it could come down to how prokaryotic genomes respond to a small population size. Every organism visible to the ...

Despite recent advances in the study of eukaryogenesis, much remains unresolved about the origin and evolution of the most complex domain of life. This year, University of Paris-Saclay biologist ...

A new study challenges a popular scenario put forward to explain the arrival of the first eukaryotic organisms. In the beginning, there was boredom. Following the emergence of cellular life on earth, ...

A lot happened in the hundreds of millions years separating the first and last eukaryotic common ancestors, but when and how most features arose remains a mystery. Eukaryogenesis is broadly defined as ...