In the vast and often unseen world of microscopic life, a recent discovery may force scientists to rethink what it means to ...

Most organisms fit comfortably into standard definitions of “life,” i.e., cells that grow, reproduce independently, and generate energy. Viruses have always been an exception, sitting in a gray area ...

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. The first member of a new family of ultra-tiny microbes, smaller than known bacteria, was recently captured in scalding-hot water ...

A cluster of JCVI-syn3.0 cells created by a group of researchers led by DNA-sequencing pioneer Craig Venter that claims the bacteria has the smallest known genome of any freely living organism.

They've created an organism that has just 473 genes, the smallest known genome of any living organism. With fewer, it wouldn't be able to sustain itself.

The bee hummingbird is the smallest living organism in the world. These birds are easily mistaken for bees because they weigh around 1.6 grams. They are only found in Cuba.

The pathogenic bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium has only 525 genes, the fewest of any living organism. The concise creation was a favorite with geneticists, and it was one of the first organisms to be ...

For the conditions the scientists demanded of the germ — living a fecund life in a glucose-rich petri dish — there was no extraneous genetic material. Thing is, the function of 32 percent of ...

Researchers at MIT have now come up with a model for how energy is spent in the smallest, simplest organisms on Earth, ranging from single-celled bacteria to multicellular microbes. The model ...

Few living scientists have much name recognition outside the field they work in. One who does, though, is Craig Venter. In the 1990s Dr Venter ran a privately financed version of the Human Genome ...