The last universal cellular ancestor (LUCA) is the most recent population of organisms from
which all cellular life on Earth descends. The reconstruction of the genome and phenotype …

The genetic code—the language used by cells to translate their genomes into proteins that
perform many cellular functions—is highly conserved throughout natural life. Rewriting the …

Reconstruction of the Tree of Life is a central goal in biology. Although numerous novel
phyla of bacteria and archaea have recently been discovered, inconsistent phylogenetic …

In this New York Times bestseller and longlist nominee for the National Book Award,“our
greatest living chronicler of the natural world”(The New York Times), David Quammen …

Motivated by the need to paint a more general picture of what life is—and could be—with
respect to the rest of the phenomena of the universe, we propose a new vocabulary for …

Lateral gene transfer (LGT) has significantly influenced bacterial evolution since the origins
of life. It helped bacteria generate flexible, mosaic genomes and enables individual cells to …

Microbes acquire DNA from a variety of sources. The last decades, which have seen the
development of genome sequencing, have revealed that horizontal gene transfer has been …

For more than 3.5 billion years, life experienced dramatic environmental extremes on Earth.
These include shifts from oxygen-less to overoxygenated atmospheres and cycling between …

Gene technology regulators receive applications seeking permission for the environmental
release of genetically modified (GM) plants, many of which possess beneficial traits such as …

Genetic variation in holobionts (host and microbiome), occurring in both host and
microbiome genomes, can be observed from two perspectives: observable variations and …