2-37 Archaea, a different type of microbe

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• Archaea refers a domain of organisms that was discovered in the 1970s.
• They are a unique form of life, but have commonalities with both bacteria and eukaryotes.

Their discovery

Before 1977 prokaryotes were phylogenetically organized into one group termed the Monera. The discovery of the extreme thermophile Thermus aquaticus in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park by Tom Brock and the subsequent analysis by Carl Woese began a series of experiments that would change how scientists think about the organization of life on this planet. This revolution is the subject of later chapters, but here we will discuss the structural differences between this new group, the Archaea, and the Bacteria. "Bacteria" and "Archaea" refers to the formal phylogenetic classification of organisms, but we will typically refer to them more casually as groups of organisms and then use "bacteria" and "archaea". The third domain consists of eukaryotic organisms, both microbes and multi-cellular and is referred to as Eukarya. As explained early in this chapter, it has become evident that eukaryotes arose when certain bacteria became engulfed in archaeal cells, eventually becoming organelles. Not surprisingly then, Archaea is a group of microbes that share some things in common with Bacteria, others with Eukarya and have still other properties that are all their own. In the following section we highlight some of the major structural features of the Archaea.

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