Scanning electron micrograph of Methanobrevibacter smithii DSM 861 (=PS T), Methanobrevibacter smithii DSM 2375 (=ALI), Methanobrevibacter smithii GRAZ-2 and WWM1085. Credit: International Journal of ...

The most widely accepted scientific explanation for the arrival of all complex life on Earth has had an unsolved mystery at its heart. According to the theory, all plants, animals and fungi, known ...

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 ...

The seafloor is home to around one-third of all the microorganisms on the Earth and is inhabited even at a depth of several kilometers. Only when it becomes too hot does the abundance of ...

There are few hard and fast rules in the study of life, but perhaps the closest we get is the central dogma of molecular biology: DNA is transcribed to RNA, which gets translated into proteins. The ...

A first look into the molecular defenses of archaea highlights the importance of surveying diverse microbes to discover new types of antimicrobials As bacteria become increasingly resistant to ...

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 ...

Scientists have found further evidence to support the idea that the primary two domains of life, the Archaea and Bacteria, are separated by a long phylogenetic tree branch and therefore distantly ...