Simplest bacteria unravelled at the cellular level
Monday, December 28, 2009 - 16:21
in Biology & Nature
Even the simplest cell appears to be far more complex than researchers had imagined. In a series of three articles in the journal Science, researchers including Vera van Noort at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, have provided a complete picture of a single cell for the first time. The study has provided important new insights for bacterial biology. For instance, prokaryotes - cellular organisms without a cell nucleus - seem to be more similar to eukaryotes than was previously thought. Without this type of basic knowledge about the operation of single cells, it is impossible to understand biology at the smallest levels.