Duplicated genes that appear in every branch of the tree of life can provide us with insight into the evolution that occurred ...

Biologists have long drawn the animal family tree with a hazy base, unsure which creature first split from the common ancestor that gave rise to everything from jellyfish to humans. Now, a new genomic ...

All life on Earth shares a common ancestor that lived roughly four billion years ago. This so-called "last universal common ancestor" represents the ...

Researchers describe a rare type of gene family, known as “universal paralogs”, that provides insight into evolutionary history predating the last universal common ancestor of all life. Detailed ...

An MIT study suggests some early life forms may have evolved the ability to use oxygen hundreds of millions of years before ...