Protists are a diverse, polyphyletic assemblage of predominantly unicellular eukaryotic organisms that do not fit within the traditional kingdoms of animals, plants, or fungi and are therefore used as a conceptual rather than taxonomic grouping in modern systematics. They exhibit a wide range of cellular organizations (from solitary to colonial and simple multicellular forms), nutritional strategies (photoautotrophy, heterotrophy, mixotrophy), and modes of locomotion (flagella, cilia, pseudopodia). As a topic in biology, “protists” encompasses key model systems for studying eukaryotic cell biology, endosymbiosis, genome evolution, and the ecological roles of microbial eukaryotes in aquatic and soil ecosystems.
A parasite carried by billions of people worldwide often causes harmful infections during pregnancy and in immunocompromised individuals and is a leading infectious cause of blindness in South America. Once it enters the ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 20, 2026
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61
Biomaterials with extraordinary properties, such as spider silk, have so far been known primarily from animals. Researchers at the University of Salzburg in Austria have now deciphered a surprising counterpart from the world ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 25, 2026
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22
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have discovered a microscopic organism that can transform into a cannibalistic "supergiant" that drastically changes size, shape, and behavior, and abandons filter-feeding ...
Ecology
Jun 2, 2026
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137
Research published in The FEBS Journal may help overcome challenges to the treatment of malaria—a tropical disease caused by infection of red blood cells with Plasmodium parasites, which are transmitted through infected mosquito ...
Cell & Microbiology
May 6, 2026
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9
Mississippi State University biologist Matthew W. Brown is part of an international research team whose latest findings, published this spring in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are reshaping scientific ...
Evolution
May 1, 2026
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60
Scientists have known for more than a century that a single-celled organism with no nerve cells—much less a brain—can behave in ways that resemble learning. But those observations only went so far. How the organism did that ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 29, 2026
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24
Scientists in Sweden have taken an important step toward fighting potato late blight, a plant disease that once triggered a historic famine in Ireland and now threatens to spread globally due to climate change. A new study ...
Agriculture
Apr 22, 2026
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11
A surprising observation in the lab has revealed a remarkable ability in Stentor coeruleus, a single-celled organism about one millimeter long. Sometimes nicknamed the "platypus" of microorganisms for its trumpet-like shape, ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 2, 2026
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31
Researchers from the Earlham Institute, in collaboration with the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford, have discovered three previously unrecognized lineages of the protist Bodo, each with its own bacterial ...
Cell & Microbiology
Mar 23, 2026
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9
Researchers at University of Tsukuba have identified a photophobic response (light avoidance) in the unicellular apusomonad Podomonas kaiyoae. The study provides critical insight into the evolution of complex flagellar and ...
Evolution
Feb 2, 2026
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12
