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 ...

In fact, why and how multicellular life evolved has long puzzled biologists. The first known instance of multicellularity was about 2.5 billion years ago, when marine cells (cyanobacteria) hooked up ...

In the evolutionary history of life, the ability of a cell to separate its inner world from the external environment was an important turning point. The so-called plasma membrane lets cells control ...

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 ...

A new study shows that multicelled organisms like the metazoan daphnia (pictured) require a tenfold increase in energy compared with protists for their growth, maintenance and survival. The high cost ...

The world would look very different without multicellular organisms – take away the plants, animals, fungi, and seaweed, and Earth starts to look like a wetter, greener version of Mars. But precisely ...

Scientists in Japan have discovered a previously unknown giant virus, offering new insight into this enigmatic category of viruses – and possibly also into the origins of multicellular life. The virus ...

Life and death are traditionally viewed as opposites. But the emergence of new multicellular life-forms from the cells of a dead organism introduces a “third state” that lies beyond the traditional ...

Compressing a type of single-celled microorganism makes it develop into a multicellular tissue-like structure with different cell types. This suggests that pressure can help drive key evolutionary ...

On the one hand, it would mean that multicellular life takes on average (ha!) 1.5 billion years less to evolve than we previously thought it would. 1.5 billion years is a very respectable difference, ...

Over 3,000 generations of laboratory evolution, researchers watched as their model organism, 'snowflake yeast,' began to adapt as multicellular individuals. In new research, the team shows how ...