The high prokaryotic mortality in pelagic habitats is caused by both viral lysis and predation by ciliated and flagellated protists. Viral lysis is thought to have the greatest effect on prokaryotic ...

Since the Victorian era, categorizing the natural world has challenged scientists. No group has presented a challenge as tricky as the protists, the tiny, complex life forms that are neither plants ...

You know when you hear somebody start a sentence with, "There are two kinds of people..." and you think to yourself "Oh boy, here it comes." But what if I were to tell you that there are just two ...

Almost all eukaryotic organisms, from plants and animals to fungi, can't survive without mitochondria -- the 'powerhouses of the cell,' which generate chemical energy using oxygen. However, a new ...

A microbiome is a community of microorganisms that inhabit an ecological niche. Microbiomes exist in both environmental biotopes, for example, a water body or forest soil - and in living multicellular ...

Every living organism falls into one of two groups: eukaryotes or prokaryotes, with cellular structure determining which group an organism belongs to. Prokaryotes are unicellular and lack a nucleus ...

All protists, fungi, animals, and plants on Earth are eukaryotes. Their cells possess membrane-bound organelles including a nucleus and mitochondria, distinct cytoskeletal features, and a unique ...