The evolution of multicellular life requires cooperation among cells, which can be undermined by intra-group selection for selfishness. Theory predicts that selection to avoid non-cooperators limits ...

Stentor coeruleus is a giant unicellular, filter-feeding protist that uses the coordinated motion of its oral ciliary structure to generate feeding currents. These currents allow the organism to ...

Images of the multicellular development of the ichthyosporean Chromosphaera perkinsii, a close cousin of animals. In red, the membranes and in blue the nuclei with their DNA. The image was obtained ...

Scaling up from one cell to many may have been a small step rather than a giant leap for early life on Earth. A single-celled organism closely related to animals controls its life cycle using a ...

Multicellular organisms (animals, plants, humans) all have the ability to methylate the cytosine base in their DNA. This process, a type of epigenetic modification, plays an important role in ...

A team of scientists, led by the University of Sheffield in the UK and Boston College in the U.S., has found a microfossil in the Scottish Highlands which contains two distinct cell types and could be ...

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. B cells churn ...

Much more difficult is learning to connect different types of stimuli or events, and predicting that one is linked to another. Such associative learning was most famously demonstrated when Ivan Pavlov ...

A study presents a striking example of cooperative organization among cells as a potential force in the evolution of multicellular life. The study is based on the fluid dynamics of cooperative feeding ...