The transition from free‑living bacteria to mutualistic symbionts is a major evolutionary innovation, but its timing and stepwise nature remain unresolved because non‑symbiotic ancestors have rarely b...

Key questions about the early evolution of archaea remain unanswered. Here, Huang et al. use improved methods of genome evolution to propose a euryarchaeal root for archaea, a methanogenic ancestor, a...

Most archaea rely on the tubulin-like protein FtsZ for division. In the last decade, several novel cell division proteins have been discovered in the model haloarchaeon Haloferax volcanii which contai...

Predicting phenotype from genotype in extant organisms is increasingly tractable through the accumulation of genome sequences and the development of machine-learning algorithms. Here we show that mach...

The emergence of the eukaryotes coincided with the diversification of histone proteins and their post-translational modifications by enzymes that constitute the core of eukaryotic chromatin. Yet the e...

Abstract. IQ-TREE (https://iqtree.github.io/) is a widely used open-source software tool for efficiently inferring phylogenetic trees under maximum likelih

Anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea mitigate methane emissions in anoxic environments. Here, Egas et al. show that these microbes can also oxidize carbon monoxide, prompting re-evaluation of their cla...

‘Ca. Methanoperedens BLZ2’ oxidizes CO at high rates with respiratory and acetogenic metabolism To assess substrate oxidation dynamics, batch activity assays were performed with granular biomass from an ‘Ca. M. BLZ2’ enrichment culture (Fig. 1). Under nitrate respiratory conditions, the culture oxidized CO (14.3% vol/vol in the headspace) at high rates that reached 475 µmol d-1 gDW-1. Compared to that, the methane oxidation rate (in the absence of CO) proceeded more slowly at 210 µmol d-1 gDW-1 (Fig. 1A). When adding volumetric equal amounts of CO and CH4 (7.1% vol/vol each) the CO oxidation rate (952 µmol d-1 gDW-1) far exceeded the CH4 oxidation rate (43 µmol d-1 gDW-1) (Fig. 1B). This strong inhibition of CH4 oxidation by CO mirrors previous observations of substrate preference in ‘Ca. M. nitroreducens’ with formate16. To suppress bacterial activity, the following incubations were supplemented with 50 µg mL-1 antibiotics (SVAK, streptomycin, vancomycin, ampicillin, kanamycin). During incubations with CO/NO3− (CO oxidation rate 979 µmol d-1 gDW-1), no accumulation of CH4, formate or acetate was detected (Fig. 1C). In incubations with CH4/NO3− (CH4 oxidation rate 85 µmol d-1 gDW-1), CO2 was the only oxidation product (Fig. 1C). In contrast, when ‘Ca. M. BLZ2’ enriched biomass was...

Re-analysis of over 92,000 metagenomes reveals hundreds of thousands of previously undescribed Bacterial and Archaeal clades hidden in plain sight.

Discover the latest election of 95 new Fellows by the European Academy of Microbiology, highlighting diverse expertise in the field.

The present blog article gives some details behind a methodology paper on using mixture substitution model for molecular dating (Wang & Meade 2026), which btw is the first paper i published aft…

The Asgard archaea have become a cornerstone of archaeal research, particularly for studies aiming to unravel the origin and early evolution of eukaryotes. This Review outlines the current state of th...

A structural catalogue of the Asgard archaeal pangenome reveals hundreds of eukaryotic-like proteins that suggest a higher degree of cellular complexity in the archaeal ancestor of eukaryotes.

Abstract. Molecular clocks are a fundamental technique in evolutionary biology for establishing the timing and tempo of organismal divergence. However, cur

Crawling motility is a hallmark of eukaryotic cells and requires a dynamic actin cytoskeleton, regulated adhesion, and spatially organized signalling pathways1–3. Asgard archaea (phylum Promethearchae...

Nature - Author Correction: Inference and reconstruction of the heimdallarchaeial ancestry of eukaryotes

The critical contribution of microbiota to animal, plant and environmental health is now widely accepted. Progress has been driven by two parallel approaches: in silico analyses of large -omics data …

The newly described microbe represents a world of parasitic, intercellular biodiversity only beginning to be revealed by genome sequencing.

The phylogeny of the Archaea continues to be revisited and revised as new groups are discovered and phylogenetic methods improve, but key questions about their early evolution remain. It has been sugg...

Application for the 2026 Workshop on Phylogenomics Use this form to apply for the 2026 Workshop on Phylogenomics being held in Cesky Krumlov, Czechia from 25th January through 7th February, ...

21 researchers from Utrecht University, University Medical Center Utrecht, and Princess Máxima Center have each been awarded a Vidi grant worth up to €850,000.

This protocol is an adapted form of the protocol developed for imaging haloarchaea (Liao et al., 2021) and subsequently applied to co-cultures containing nanohaloarchaea and haloarchaea (Hamm et al., ...

PhD Project - The genomic basis of symbiotic integration at University of Bath, listed on FindAPhD.com

Abstract. The Asgard archaea are a diverse archaeal phylum important for our understanding of cellular evolution because they include the lineage that gave

The Nanohaloarchaeota are a clade of halophilic symbionts with small cells and genomes. Originally placed within the Euryarchaeota, they are now widely thought to belong to the DPANN archaea. However,...

Abstract. The Asgard archaea are a diverse archaeal phylum important for our understanding of cellular evolution because they include the lineage that gave