Archaea are a major domain of prokaryotic microorganisms characterized by unique molecular and biochemical features distinguishing them from Bacteria and Eukarya. Their cell membranes typically contain ether-linked isoprenoid lipids, and their cell walls lack peptidoglycan, instead incorporating diverse polymers such as pseudomurein or S-layer proteins. Archaeal information-processing machinery (DNA replication, transcription, and translation) shows higher homology to eukaryotic systems than to bacterial counterparts. Archaea occupy a wide range of environments, including extreme habitats and moderate ecosystems, and play critical roles in biogeochemical cycles, notably methanogenesis and ammonia oxidation, making them important topics in microbial ecology, evolution, and environmental genomics.
Sulfolobus islandicus, an archaeal model organism, offers unique advantages for metabolic engineering and synthetic biology applications owing to its ability to thrive under low pH and high temperature conditions. Although ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 7, 2026
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It's been known for nearly a century that swarms of single-celled organisms thrive by consuming chemicals from their environments and expelling methane gas as a byproduct. In 2024, researchers in the laboratory of Roland ...
Ecology
Dec 18, 2025
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A newly discovered promoter element "start" points to a shared regulatory syntax for controlling transcription initiation in bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes.
Evolution
Dec 15, 2025
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151
Ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) are some of the most abundant microorganisms in the ocean and play a key role in nitrogen cycling. Yet, despite their ubiquity, scientists have long puzzled over how these microbes can flourish ...
Earth Sciences
Dec 11, 2025
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The microbe Pyrodictium abyssi is an archaeon—a member of what's known as the third domain of life—and an extremophile. It lives in deep-sea thermal vents, at temperatures above the boiling point of water, without light or ...
Cell & Microbiology
Dec 5, 2025
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"Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative," wrote H. G. Wells. This principle—that survival requires change—was mastered billions of years ago by single-celled organisms living in extreme heat. Over ...
Evolution
Nov 29, 2025
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Scientists have discovered living microbes producing methane in the fractured rocks deep inside Sweden's Siljan impact crater, offering insights into Earth's earliest life and the search for life beyond our planet.
Astrobiology
Nov 26, 2025
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During the annual salmon run last fall, University of Washington researchers pulled salmon DNA out of thin air and used it to estimate the number of fish that passed through the adjacent river. Aden Yincheong Ip, a UW research ...
Ecology
Nov 26, 2025
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The genetic code is the recipe for life, and provides the instructions for how to make proteins, generally using just 20 amino acids. But certain groups of microbes have an expanded genetic code, in which one or two additional ...
Biotechnology
Nov 26, 2025
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91
Hyperthermophilic archaea are true survival experts. They thrive in boiling hot springs and deep-sea vents—environments lethal to nearly all other forms of life.
Cell & Microbiology
Nov 25, 2025
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