Archaea are a distinct domain of life—along with bacteria and eukaryotes (i.e., organisms with a cell nucleus such as animals, plants and fungi). Although they appear similar to bacteria under ...

Amber Dance is an award-winning freelance science journalist based in Southern California. After earning a doctorate in biology, she re-trained in journalism as a way to engage her broad interest in ...

Archaea—one of the three primary domains of life alongside bacteria and eukaryotes—are often overlooked and sometimes mistaken for bacteria due to their single-celled nature and lack of a nucleus.

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 ...

The study was published in the journal Cell. Ten years ago, nobody knew that Asgard archaea even existed. In 2015, researchers examining deep-sea sediments near the underwater volcano Loki ...