A major event in the evolution of organisms on earth was the development of complex, multicellular life forms made of eukaryotic cells, which are thought to have come from prokaryotic cells. Studies ...

New studies by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology show that competition between different evolutionary developmental stages of multicellular life cycles can be important for the ...

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen have shown that giant viruses long thought to exist only as fleeting, free-living particles that can embed themselves permanently in the ...

For some three billion years, unicellular organisms ruled Earth. Then, around one billion years ago, a new chapter of life began. Early attempts at team living began to stick, paving the way for the ...

Marine bacteria normally seen as single cells join together as a “microscopic snow globe” to consume bulky floating carbohydrates. Close your eyes and imagine bacteria. Perhaps you’re picturing our ...

Life’s leap from single-celled to multicellular organisms marks a pivotal moment in evolutionary history. This transformation laid the foundation for the complex life forms we see today. By studying ...

In the multicellular soil bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor, some cells start producing lots of antibiotics after mutations delete big chunks of their genomes. Now a computer model has helped to ...

We typically think of robots as metal objects, filled with motors and circuits. But the field of molecular robotics is starting to change that. Like the formation of complex living organisms, ...

Researchers discover that giant viruses can lie dormant within a multicellular host genome, reactivate on cue, and be inherited like a super-gene. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology ...