Before there were feet, something this small learned to crawl

In the first live recordings of their movement, two cultivated Asgard archaea repeatedly changed shape and pulled themselves across glass with protrusions up to 20 times the cell body's length. Actin-blocking compounds stopped that controlled motion, supporting an actin-based mechanism. The behavior is observed; whether it resembles machinery used on the road to the first complex cells remains an evolutionary interpretation to test.