As organisms develop from embryos, groups of cells migrate and reshape themselves to form all manner of complex tissues. There are no anatomical molds shaped like lungs, livers or other tissues for ...

Humans like to think that being multicellular (and bigger) is a definite advantage, even though 80% of life on Earth consists of single-celled organisms—some thriving in conditions lethal to any beast ...

Life emerged on Earth some 3.8 billion years ago. The “primordial soup theory” proposes that chemicals floating in pools of water, in the presence of sunlight and electrical discharge, spontaneously ...

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 ...

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

A deep dive into macroalgae genetics has uncovered the genetic underpinnings that enabled macroalgae, or 'seaweed,' to evolve multicellularity. Three lineages of macroalgae developed multicellularity ...

Bacterial superorganisms must evolve defenses to fight off infections, and microbiologists found that they use a weapons cache coincidentally similar to that of the human immune system. “The [DGR ...