We tend to view ourselves and the complex cells that build us as a distinct branch of the tree of life from the compact, ...

Originally discovered in extreme environments such as hydrothermal vents, archaea, a single-celled microorganism, can also be found in the digestive systems of animals, including humans in which they ...

Archaea are a relatively recently discovered group of microorganisms that occupy their own branch on the tree of life. Though similar in some ways to bacteria, they are not the same. Researchers have ...

Living in the Dead Sea would be a very unpleasant experience for most creatures. With salt concentration above 30% and ...

Beyond bacteria, fungi and archaea are emerging as powerful regulators of digestion, immunity, and disease risk, revealing ...

Ten years ago, nobody knew that Asgard archaea even existed. In 2015, however, researchers examining deep-sea sediments discovered gene fragments that indicated a new and previously undiscovered form ...

In the late 1970s, a new branch was added to the tree of life, and archaea joined bacteria and eukarya, as domain classifications. Archaea and bacteria are both simple forms of cells called ...

When you get infected with a virus, some of the first weapons your body deploys to fight it were passed down to us from our microbial ancestors billions of years ago. According to new research from ...

An artist’s depiction of an Asgard archaeon, based on cryo-electron tomography data: the cell body and appendages feature thread-like skeletal structures, similar to those found in complex cells with ...