From the flamboyant blossoms and birds of rainforests to the living rainbows of coral reefs, Earth’s surface is teeming with ...

A recent study has shown that they also have the potential to fix inorganic carbon—in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2)— to generate acetate, an important fuel for other sediment-dwelling organisms ...

However, the mechanisms behind these interactions among archaea remain poorly understood. The study by Tobias Zachs and colleagues focuses on the role of contractile injection systems (CISs ...

An international scientific team has redefined our understanding of archaea, a microbial ancestor to humans from two billion ...

The protocol consisted of digestion and two-dimensional electrophoresis of radioactive small-subunit (16S or 18S) ribosomal RNA. When exposed to X-ray film, the separated fragments generated a unique ...

Methanol is metabolized into the natural gas methane by many microbes living under Earth’s surface, but its source has been unclear. It emerges that some bacteria convert formate molecules into ...

Researchers have identified ancient proteins that may help explain how the first complex cells evolved from simpler ones over 15 billion years ago I ...

One of these involves fusion between cells from domains Archaea and Bacteria: one of the cells involved in the fusion becomes the eukaryote nucleus (Martin & Muller 1998; Martin 2005; Martin et al.

Prokaryotes are unicellular and lack a nucleus and membrane-bound organelles. They are generally smaller and simpler and include bacteria and archaea. Eukaryotes on the other hand are often ...