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 ...

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 ...

Throughout the history of life on Earth, multicellular life evolved from single cells numerous times, but explaining how this happened is one of the major evolutionary puzzles of our time. However, ...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) — a class of small RNAs with a role in the regulation of gene expression — had until now been found only in multicellular organisms. Now, Wang, Qi and colleagues provide the first ...

If you look at the world around you now - at the plants, animals, and the people around you, it's easy to take for granted our multicellular existence. Life didn't always look like this. In fact, way ...

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 ...

The mystery of how multicellular life evolved has long baffled scientists, who've spent years trying to understand how solitary single-celled organisms began living in unison and triggered the ...

Scientists have discovered the fossil of what may be the earliest multicellular animal ever found. Dating back a billion years, the microscopic fossil contains two distinct cell types, potentially ...

Multicellular cyanobacteria do something strikingly sophisticated with their DNA, toggling key genes on and off as day turns to night so different cells can specialize without starving the colony of ...

The genome sequencing of the algae, Gonium pectorale, provides valuable clues into how and why single cells live together in groups -- one of the earliest steps on the path to a multicellular ...