Protists, single-celled eukaryotic organisms encompassing unicellular algae and protozoans, inhabit aquatic environments. Functioning as primary producers and oxygen generators, they play crucial ...

Researchers from the Earlham Institute, in collaboration with the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford, have discovered three previously unrecognized lineages of the protist Bodo, each ...

Biodiversity underlies ecosystem functioning. While aboveground biodiversity is often well studied, the belowground microbiome, in particular protists, remains largely unknown. Indeed, holistic ...

From Massachusetts to Mississippi, a unicellular protist is hinting at answers about the evolution of multicellularity while raising a whole new set of questions. From Massachusetts to Mississippi, a ...

Soil microbes are essential for soil fertility. However, most studies focus on bacterial and/or fungal communities, while the top-down drivers of this microbiome composition, protists, remain poorly ...

Scientists testing a new method of sequencing single cells have unexpectedly changed our understanding of the rules of genetics. The genome of a protist has revealed a seemingly unique divergence in ...

Tropical rainforests are one of the most species-rich areas on earth. Thousands of animal and plant species live there. The smaller microbial protists, which are not visible to the naked eye, are also ...

Rule-breaking discovery: Researchers found a pond protist that reassigns all three standard genetic stop codons to amino acids, overturning a long-held view of code universality. Why it matters: The ...

Mitochondria are very well known as the powerhouses of the cell. Generally speaking, all eukaryotes, including plants, fungi, and animals, are made of cells that contain mitochondria. These organelles ...

Being single-celled doesn’t necessarily doom a creature to a simple life. A fresh look at a long-dismissed, century-old experiment suggests that so-called primitive organisms can behave in ...