By growing an unusual tentacled microbe in the lab, microbiologists may have taken a big step toward resolving the earliest branches on the tree of life and unraveling one of its great mysteries: how the complex cells that make up the human body — and all plants, animals, and many single-celled organisms — first came to be. Such microbes, called Asgard archaea, have previously been cultured — once — but the advance reported in Nature marks the first time they’ve been grown in high enough concentrations to study their innards in detail. Jennifer Glass, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and a geo-microbiologist, didn't work on the study, but her research in 2020 finding unusual ribosome structures in Asgard microbes helped the scientists published in Nature zero in on what to look for in their specimens.