It's tiny and needy, but is it alive? That's a question prompted by recent research that highlights a surprisingly complex part of biology. The organism in question is a microbe called Sukunaarchaeum ...

Using genomics, evolutionary biologists test several hypotheses on the origin of viruses. New evidence suggests they may have ...

Cell growth is the most fundamental process in organisms, yet the way in which metabolism determines its rate has long remained unclear. To decipher this mystery, researchers from Earth-Life Science ...

A clear, simple definition of life has always been hard to pin down and remains elusive. Most biology lessons say living things must grow, produce energy, and reproduce on their own. But viruses don’t ...

Metacaspases, ancestral homologues of the caspase family, are pivotal cysteine proteases found in a wide range of unicellular organisms, including yeasts, algae, and phytoplankton. These enzymes ...