Henrik Drake, Professor, Linnaeus University, SwedenTuesday 10th February 2016, 16:00 CET
SUMMARY: The EU-funded project XTREMOLIFE aims to accelerate the bioprospecting and biodiscovery of extremophile microorganisms from desert, polar, and volcanic environments, as well as the identification of their bioactive compounds, […]
Before plants evolved, vegetative life consisted of primitive green algae living in the sea. Like plants, these algae survived by performing photosynthesis, turning sunlight into energy. However, little light reaches […]
Archaea, a domain of microorganisms found in diverse environments including the human microbiome, represent the closest known prokaryotic relatives of eukaryotes.
Symbioses are widespread in nature and have been the source of much evolutionary innovation. While some types of symbioses evolved multiple times across space and time (e.g., oxygenic photosymbioses or […]
The origin of life embodies two fundamental questions: how and when did life begin? It is commonly conjectured that life began on Earth around 4 billion years ago.
All life on Earth shares a common ancestor that lived roughly four billion years ago. This so-called “last universal common ancestor” represents the most ancient organism that researchers can study.
The last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA) is widely thought to have been an oxygen-respiring organism, arising through endosymbiosis when a free-living bacterium became the mitochondrion.
As the only known habitable (and inhabited) planet in the universe, Earth informs our search for life elsewhere. Future telescopes like the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will soon look for […]
Approximately two-thirds of the Earth, the only known inhabited planet, is covered in ocean. Why not 0.01% or 99.99%? It has been previously suggested that this may represent a certain […]
