Scientists are trying to understand how complex life emerged on Earth about 2 billion years ago. Our microbial ancestors could be the key.

Who were our earliest ancestors? The answer could lie in a special group of single-celled organisms with a cytoskeleton similar to that of complex organisms, such as animals and plants. Ten years ago, ...

Hardy bacteria in a lab survived pressures comparable to an asteroid strike on the red planet, suggesting a hypothetical scenario in which our planet was seeded with life.

Conservation biologists propose a daunting task: protecting Earth’s diversity of bacteria and other microbes. By Carl Zimmer Hundreds of scientists have joined together to save a group of species from ...

Technological advancements in computation and genetics have enabled researchers to sequence the genomes of vast numbers of organisms. With metagenomics techniques, researchers are able to sequence all ...

Now, a team of researchers have curated the largest-ever database of microorganisms from more than 2,500 different foods. 4 The collection, published in Cell, includes over 500 new microbial species ...

A collection of short dispatches from the field of climate microbiology conveys the contributions that single-celled life forms make to our climate system, and how we can work with them to address ...

When snow blankets the landscape, it may seem like life slows down. But beneath the surface, an entire world of activity is unfolding. "Unlike many plants or some animals, which tend to go dormant or ...

Researchers from the University of Vienna discovered MISO bacteria that use iron minerals to oxidize toxic sulfide, creating energy and producing sulfate. This biological process reshapes how ...