Scientists have discovered that a single-celled organism can negotiate the shortest way through a maze.
Solazyme, another firm based in South San Francisco, wants to use single-celled algae to make its fuel.
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Here is just one example: Single-celled marine plants produce fully half of all the oxygen in our atmosphere.
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These came from a single-celled organism called a tetrahymena - the same organism in which telomerase was first discovered.
This is caused by a single-celled animal which causes itching and a discharge.
The most obvious difference between a yeast and a nematode is that one is single-celled while the other is multi-cellular.
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For generations, microbiologists had known that single-celled bacteria, fungi and algae survive thanks to proteins that respond to visible light.
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Multi-cellular creatures have to do several things that single-celled ones do not.
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The single-celled organisms appeared to be harmless, though we were cautioned not to touch anything, to keep the windows shut, to wash our hands.
Much of the difference between the single-celled fungus and the two multicellular animals is accounted for by those genes and proteins that make multicellularity possible.
He proposes the industrial-scale culturing (biomanufacturing, as he describes it, rather than farming) of single-celled algae that have been genetically engineered to turn out fuel-ready hydrocarbons.
But Volvox shows the sort of thing to look for: a gene that stops reproduction in single-celled creatures and has been co-opted to do a new job.
In Spore, players start as a single-celled organism and evolve into a swimming or walking creature that mates, becomes a village and, eventually, ends up as a planet.
What Dr Nedelcu and Dr Michod did was to look for an antecedent of regA in a single-celled creature, in order to find out what its job was.
When it comes in contact with single-celled pathogens, such as viruses or parasites or bacteria, it disables the pathogens' metabolic enzymes, causing the pathogen to suffocate and die.
But even if single-celled organisms are all we can manage to discover in the foreseeable future, Darling is eloquent about the ways in which such findings are now changing how we think about our own existence.
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