Grown in a lab for the first time, our closest microbial cousins reach out long arms to hold their partners

Every complex cell in your body descends, in part, from an ancient microbe — and scientists have now grown its closest living relatives in a laboratory for the first time. A team led by Hiroyuki Imachi and Masaru Nobu at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology raised two strains of Heimdallarchaeia, single-celled organisms with no nucleus or internal compartments. Instead of the complex insides some theories predicted, the cells turned out to be plain inside and elaborate outside, stretching out long, branching arms that grip partner microbes — a living hint of how an ancient partnership may have become the first complex cell, the ancestor of everything from fungi to people.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation