In the vast and often unseen world of microscopic life, a recent discovery may force scientists to rethink what it means to ...

The being in question is a microbe called Sukunaarchaeum mirabile. Preliminary research says it stretches the definition of ...

What is the largest organism? Until a few years ago, Oregon's "humongous fungus" was considered the world's largest organism.

Because they rely on hosts for a majority of functions, viruses aren’t considered alive. But entities like this one ...

It has genes for ribosomes, tRNAs, and mRNAs. These components are the scaffolding of life: the tools by which cells read ...

A single organism. The mass of all the genetically identical trees weighs around 6,000 tons, which makes it, in terms of mass, the largest living thing on Earth.

But now this algal ecosystem—like literally everywhere else on the planet—is thoroughly infested with microplastics, which ride on currents and blow in from faraway metropolises to settle on ...

Scientists have discovered the organism with the largest known genome. At 160 billion base pairs, it's 50 times bigger than the human genome, and the organism it’s describing is a tiny fern you ...

Ctenophores are one of, if not the, oldest animals on Earth — quite possibly a sister to all other animals in the tree of life, so “they provide a really unique opportunity to study ...

A tough, bell-shaped fungus that grows on the rotting bark of trees has been used as a fire starter for centuries, earning it the nickname “tinder fungus.” Now, researchers are taking a closer ...

In short, this organism sits in a gray area between life as we know it and the strange, parasitic world of viruses. End of Article. Follow Us On Social Media. Visual Stories. Previous.