Carl Woese at a lightboard in 1976. Kristen Wilson Kristen Wilson Carl Woese at a lightboard in 1976. From the middle of the 18th century to the 1970s, it was believed there were two “domains” that ...

URBANA – University of Illinois microbiology and Institute for Genomic Biology professor Carl R. Woese, who adopted a molecular approach to classifying organisms and upended taxonomy with the ...

For the better part of this century, microbiologists have largely ignored evolutionary relationships among bacteria. But a revolution has occurred in microbiology with the advent of nucleic sequencing ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Life did not begin with one primordial cell. Instead, there were initially at least three simple types of loosely constructed cellular organizations. They swam in a pool of genes, ...

The man best known for determining that archaea—an ancient type of microbe that often lives in extreme environments—should be classified in their own domain in the evolutionary tree, died in his home ...

How a discovery in the 1970s changed the theory of the origin of complex life on earth.

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He speaks with the wisdom of someone approaching 75 years of age, with a knowledge of biology acquired from studying cellular evolution for the past 40, and with the assurance of a scientist who has ...