Step far enough back from the tree of life and it begins to look quite simple. At its heart are just three stout branches, representing the three domains of life: bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. But that’s too simple, according to a band of biologists who believe we may be on the verge of discovering the fourth domain of life. Image: roygbivibgyor
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Cancer remains a formidable foe even 40 years after Richard Nixon officially declared war on it. A new and controversial hypothesis now offers hope that the war can ultimately be won. It suggests tumours have a limited ability to evade modern therapies – a consequence of the idea that cancer is our most distant animal ancestor, a “living fossil” from over 600 million years ago. Image: GE Healthcare
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The Pacific hagfish is the only vertebrate that can obey the cardinal rule of the dinner table: don’t eat with your mouth open. Uniquely among the 50,000 vertebrate species alive today, it can absorb nutrients through its skin. The primitive hagfish, thought to be as close as we can get in a living animal to the first vertebrate, has an internal salinity that matches its surroundings. Image: Ryan Somma
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