Understanding how cells within and around a tumor interact provides key information about a cancer's architecture, a patient's immune response to the disease and even how susceptible the cancer may be ...

Instead, cells live as a consortium of multiple cells that behave in many ways like a single multicellular organism. This requirement to live together means that when MMB reproduce, they do so by ...

In fact, why and how multicellular life evolved has long puzzled biologists. The first known instance of multicellularity was about 2.5 billion years ago, when marine cells (cyanobacteria) hooked up ...

Scientists at Nagoya University in Japan have identified the genes that allow an organism to switch between living as single cells and forming multicellular structures. This ability to alternate ...

A deep dive into macroalgae genetics has uncovered the genetic underpinnings that enabled macroalgae, or 'seaweed,' to evolve multicellularity. Three lineages of macroalgae developed multicellularity ...

The design of synthetic developmental programs for multicellular mammalian systems is a cornerstone of synthetic biology. The programs hinge on the construction of gene regulatory circuits that ...

Unlike accidental cell death, some cells can actively decide to die through a controlled process. This is called programmed ...

Bacterial superorganisms must evolve defenses to fight off infections, and microbiologists found that they use a weapons cache coincidentally similar to that of the human immune system. “The [DGR ...

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- Humans like to think that being multicellular (and bigger) is a definite advantage, even though 80 percent of life on Earth consists of single-celled organisms – some thriving in ...