A new study suggests that ancient microbes once cast as oxygen haters may have actually learned to use the gas, offering a ...

Ancient microbes tied to our earliest ancestors could use oxygen, reshaping ideas about how complex life began on Earth.

A team led by Brett Baker at the University of Texas at Austin has found that some Asgard archaea, the ancient microbial group most closely related to all complex life on Earth, carried the molecular ...

Symbiotic bacteria living inside insect cells have lost much of their DNA over hundreds of millions of years, much like the ancient microbes that evolved into mitochondria ...

People have long wondered what life was first like on Earth, and if there is life in our solar system beyond our planet. Scientists have reason to believe that some of the moons in our solar system – ...

Scientists discovered that wrinkled rocks in Morocco were formed by deep sea microbes that survived without sunlight.

When humans need more Vitamin B12—a nutrient that makes healthy red blood cells and turns food into energy—we can get it by taking a supplement or eating fish. But what about ocean life, including the ...

Scientists propose that eukaryotes formed when an Asgard archaeon entered into a close partnership with an alphaproteobacterium. Over time, the two organisms became permanently linked. The ...

Across the coldest places on Earth, something quiet but powerful is happening beneath your feet and under the ice. As ...

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 ...