Innate immunity is an ancient and highly diversified layer of host defense. In vertebrates its evolution has been tied closely to the origin and ...

Draft genomes generated using more affordable second-generation sequencing technologies could be assembled for a larger ...

Hox9–10 genes act at the earliest stages of pelvic fin and hindlimb development in zebrafish and newts, revealing a conserved ...

Vertebrates have extremely different brain sizes: even with the same body size, brain size can vary a hundredfold. As a rule, mammals and birds have the largest brains in relation to their body size, ...

Researchers report February 15 in the journal Cell that ancient viruses may be to thank for myelin—and, by extension, our large, complex brains. The team found that a retrovirus-derived genetic ...

Archaea are often mistaken as bacteria, given that both are small, single-cell organisms. However, archaea are as genetically different from bacteria as humans are from bacteria. While archaea are ...

The researchers from the HiLIFE Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki compared two central bearded dragon lizards (Pogona vitticeps): a normal one and a mutant with no body scales. They ...

Researchers have long assumed that a tube in the famous Pikaia fossil ran along the animal’s back. But a new study turned the fossil upside down. By Carl Zimmer Over the past 500 million years, ...

Scientists have long puzzled over the gap in the fossil record that would explain the evolution of invertebrates to vertebrates. Vertebrates, including fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, ...

A 410-million-year-old armored fish from Yunnan, China, pushes back the fossil record of euantiarchs by 10 million years and ...