«We found that Asgard
archaea share many genes uniquely with eukaryotes, including several genes that are involved in the formation of structures that give eukaryotic cells their complex character.
Not exact matches
Last, the investigation of informational processing and cellular machineries have revealed that genomes of Asgard
archaea, which affiliate with eukaryotes in the tree of life (see the figure), encode proteins that they only
share with eukaryotes.
Based on pioneering work from the acclaimed biologist Carl Woese, it has been known that eukaryotes at some point
shared a common ancestor with
archaea.
So his group analysed the genomes of 1800 bacteria and 130
archaea to find the genes that were the most ancient but not necessarily
shared.
SEAS researchers have found that these pink - hued
archaea — called Halobacterium salinarum — use the same mechanisms to maintain size as bacteria and eukaryotic life, indicting that cellular division strategy may be
shared across all domains of life.