Bacteria are an integral part of human life. These organisms are on your skin, in your mouth, your ears, and your gut. After birth, a diverse population is acquired by the age of three and remarkably the population is quite similar and just as diverse... click to read more

Genes are an essential component of every living being. They are encoded in the DNA, and contain the information needed to produce a fully-functional organism. Deciphering the origin of new genes in organisms is important to understand how living beings adapted to their environment. Genes... click to read more

Our multicellular bodies containing trillions of cells seem to have little in common with protists, the tiny single-celled creatures inhabiting every drop of water, which spend their days eating bacteria or each other, parasitizing larger organisms or living from light. And yet, this is how... click to read more

It was the greatest leap in evolution since the emergence of life on Earth. So-called eukaryotic cells, the building blocks of all multicellular organisms like you and me, animals, plants, fungi, and also a whole zoo of single-celled protists, evolved from a common ancestor more... click to read more

The Tara Oceans consortium recently published five scientific papers in the journal Science presenting the initial wave of scientific results from the first six years of the project.1-5 The findings show the extraordinary diversity of plankton in the world’s oceans, uncover many of the... click to read more