A lot happened in the hundreds of millions years separating the first and last eukaryotic common ancestors, but when and how most features arose remains a mystery.
As cricket blastoderms form, cell nuclei are pulled into an egg’s remaining empty space to form the new cell layers that will shape the developing animal.
Discovering a new type of subnuclear body taught me how pursuing the unexpected can lead to new insights—in this case, about long noncoding RNAs and liquid-liquid phase separation in cells.
From regulating each other’s gene expression to encoding different parts of the same proteins, the two genome types in every eukaryotic cell are far from independent.
Interactions between mitochondrial and nuclear genomes have further-reaching effects on physiological function, adaptation, and speciation than previously appreciated.