Pyrrolysine is an important component of methyltransferase enzymes, which the archaea use to metabolize methylamine in the environment. “The need for that metabolism and availability of the machinery ...

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 ...

Thanks to a wealth of new genomic sequence data, the family tree of Archaea, which encompassed just two phyla 16 years ago, has exploded in recent years. It now includes more than a dozen phyla, ...

An elusive marine microbe, once known only by its DNA, has finally been cultured in the lab and could grant hints as to how eukaryotic life originated, researchers reported August 8 in a preprint ...

The genetic code is the recipe for life, and provides the instructions for how to make proteins, generally using just 20 ...

Microbes of the archaea group have been found to feed on perchlorate (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1233957). The findings demonstrate that biological breakdown of perchlorate (ClO 4 –) into chloride ...

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, ...