How to Use eukaryote in a Sentence
eukaryote
noun-
Since that original act, the eukaryote has transformed again and again.
—Quanta Magazine, 28 Oct. 2024
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So until the new study, eukaryotes were the only group totally left out of the fun.
—Amber Dance, Discover Magazine, 2 Feb. 2024
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Plus, there were no archaeal genomes that were especially close to those of eukaryotes.
—ArsTechnica, 11 June 2026
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There weren’t just two—there were five, and some were eukaryotes (with nucleuses), and some were prokaryotes (without).
—Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 15 Nov. 2019
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The search for the first eukaryote has researchers painstakingly coaxing rare microbes from seafloor sludge.
—Quanta Magazine, 19 Dec. 2023
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The fragments contained genes from a species of archaea that seemed to be closely related to eukaryotes.
—Carl Zimmer, New York Times, 15 Jan. 2020
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This organism isn't an animal, plant or fungus but a eukaryote.
—Ashley Strickland, CNN, 23 May 2018
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But archaea and eukaryotes turn out to be similar in other respects, and archaea are unique in yet others.
—David P. Barash, WSJ, 9 Aug. 2018
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This sort of complex sorting of cellular contents is a feature of all modern eukaryotes.
—Elizabeth Rayne, Ars Technica, 2 Feb. 2024
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Mitochondria may have been born early in the evolution of eukaryotes.
—Quanta Magazine, 29 Oct. 2015
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Welcome to Asgard Complex cells, called eukaryotes, carry a mixture of three types of genes.
—John Timmer, Ars Technica, 7 Aug. 2019
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Many scientists believe that eukaryotes evolved from the combination of two types of microbes.
—Ashley Strickland, CNN Money, 4 Mar. 2026
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Those components, or organelles, characterize cells of the third branch, the eukaryotes.
—Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 8 Aug. 2019
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In eukaryotes, two versions of the protein, alpha and beta tubulin, snap together.
—Veronique Greenwood, Quanta Magazine, 8 Sep. 2025
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In that case, the transition might have fueled, and been fueled by, eukaryotes’ tendency for genome expansion.
—Quanta Magazine, 2 May 2024
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Or maybe the extra energy afforded by mitochondria helped eukaryotes kick-start the process.
—Quanta Magazine, 2 May 2024
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The proteins fit together in the same way as in eukaryotes, although the structures were made up of five rods, rather than 13, making a miniature tubule.
—Veronique Greenwood, Quanta Magazine, 8 Sep. 2025
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Life was limited to the oceans and large creatures had yet to evolve, but fossils show that microscopic eukaryotes such as algae lived before and after the episode.
—Byadam Mann, science.org, 4 Apr. 2023
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Instead of feeding on molecular debris, eukaryotes now had enough fuel to chase after bacteria and engulf them.
—Carl Zimmer, STAT, 30 May 2018
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This symbiosis spiraled upward, allowing eukaryote cells to become far bigger, far more complex, than any cell before.
—Carl Zimmer, STAT, 30 May 2018
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But tracing the earliest eukaryotes back through Earth’s history has been difficult.
—Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 23 Oct. 2023
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Why natural selection in eukaryotes favored introns that needed to be removed by spliceosomes is unknown.
—Jake Buehler, Quanta Magazine, 30 Mar. 2023
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In contrast to eukaryotes, which all have a suite of organelles in common, different groups of prokaryotes showcase their own specialized compartments.
—Quanta Magazine, 27 Aug. 2019
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This protein complex is preserved across all eukaryotes — basically, all animals, plants, and fungi.
—William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 2 Mar. 2024
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What’s more, cell division — for which microtubules are crucial in eukaryotes — has yet to be observed consistently in these organisms.
—Veronique Greenwood, Quanta Magazine, 8 Sep. 2025
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Evolutionary biologists have long puzzled over how eukaryotes could have evolved from such simple precursors.
—Carl Zimmer, New York Times, 15 Jan. 2020
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Grypania may have been either a bacterial colony or a eukaryote — an organism with specialized cells, enclosed in a membrane.
—Brandon Keim, WIRED, 30 June 2010
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Like their nucleus-deficient prokaryotic brethren, eukaryotes are challenging to grow in culture.
—Carrie Arnold, WIRED, 21 Apr. 2019
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In a fateful encounter, a cyanobacterium was engulfed by a eukaryote, a cell that had evolved the capacity for internal organs, and lived on within its membrane.
—Lucy Jakub, The New York Review of Books, 1 Dec. 2020
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Families are the taxonomic group above the genus level and the eukaryotes comprise roughly 9,300 of them.
—The Economist, 23 Jan. 2018
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'eukaryote.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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