Scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) revealed key details about the evolution of life on Earth by studying microorganisms known as Asgard archaea. The study ...

An international scientific team has redefined our understanding of archaea, a microbial ancestor to humans from two billion years ago, by showing how they use hydrogen gas. The findings explain how ...

Every summer from 2013 to 2015, Dimitry Sorokin waded into the shallow, briny, alkaline lakes of Siberia’s Kulunda Steppe. Pale carbonate minerals crusted the pools’ edges, where lambs, too young to ...

A newly discovered phylum of Archaea, Brockarchaeota, can break down plant and organic matter without releasing methane. An international collaboration between scientists based in the USA and China, ...

While mutation and sexual reproduction drive genetic innovation in many eukaryotes, for life’s exclusively unicellular domains—archaea and bacteria—horizontal gene transfer is a critical mechanism for ...

Threadlike filaments pressed in rock may be the remnants of archaea that burped methane near hydrothermal vents 3.42 billion years ago. If so, these strands in rock excavated in South Africa around a ...

Induction of Multicellularity: When mechanically compressed, the salt-loving archaeon Haloferax volcanii can shift from being single-celled to forming tissue-like clusters, displaying new mechanical ...

Scientists characterize novel enzymes from deep-sea microbes with a key function in the ethane degradation process, revealing surprises in the metabolism of these organisms. Seeps on the deep seafloor ...

The archaea constitute a separate domain of life, distinct from bacteria, with many aspects of their biology closer to eukaryotes. Archaea have been adopted as a model system for studies on eukaryotes ...

Our view of the phylogenetic diversity and ecological distribution of members of the domain Archaea is rapidly evolving. Historically, Archaea were regarded as a collection of extremophiles that could ...

Ancient horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the transfer of genes between the three domains of life: the Archaea, the Bacteria and the eukaryotes. Ancient HGT seems to have been a main force in organism ...