Understanding of secular evolution of the Earth system is based largely on the rock and
mineral archive preserved in the continental lithosphere. Based on the frequency and range …

For 15 years, the eukaryote Tree of Life (eToL) has been divided into five to eight major
groupings, known as 'supergroups'. However, the tree has been profoundly rearranged …

The nature of the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), its age and its impact on the Earth
system have been the subject of vigorous debate across diverse disciplines, often based on …

In the ongoing debates about eukaryogenesis—the series of evolutionary events leading to
the emergence of the eukaryotic cell from prokaryotic ancestors—members of the Asgard …

We investigated genome folding across the eukaryotic tree of life. We find two types of three-
dimensional (3D) genome architectures at the chromosome scale. Each type appears and …

Eukaryotic life appears to have flourished surprisingly late in the history of our planet. This
view is based on the low diversity of diagnostic eukaryotic fossils in marine sediments of mid …

Numerous diverse microorganisms reside in the cold desert soils of continental Antarctica,
though we lack a holistic understanding of the metabolic processes that sustain them. Here …

Prebiotic chemistry aims to explain how the biochemistry of life as we know it came to be.
Most efforts in this area have focused on provisioning compounds of importance to life by …

In modern oceans, eukaryotic phytoplankton is dominated by lineages with red algal-derived
plastids such as diatoms, dinoflagellates, and coccolithophores. Despite the ecological …

The long history of life on Earth has unfolded as a cause-and-effect relationship with the
evolving amount of oxygen (O2) in the oceans and atmosphere. Oxygen deficiency …