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 ...

Before bacteria and archaea became two major branches of life, their common ancestor already possessed part of the chemistry ...

New research suggests deep-sea vent metals powered early metabolism before enzymes existed, revealing how life may have begun making essential molecules on Earth.

We tend to view ourselves and the complex cells that build us as a distinct branch of the tree of life from the compact, seemingly featureless cells of bacteria and archaea. But we’ve found that our ...

As bacteria become increasingly resistant to antibiotics and other antibacterials, there is a growing need for alternatives. In a study published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, Tobias ...

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 ...

, Aug. 12 -- Scientists have found evidence suggesting that the first free-living cells on Earth may have emerged ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...