Spear expected to find species
of archaebacteria, the oldest living organisms on Earth, because they're known to thrive in such extreme conditions.
These components are the mitochondria (derived from purple bacteria), the plastids (from cyanobacteria), and the nucleocytoplasmic component (
from archaebacteria).
Of the 150 eubacteria species found, nearly a third had not previously been catalogued, likewise for two - thirds of the 90
archaebacteria species in the samples.
Existing chemistry converts CO2 and hydrogen to methanol (CO2 + 3 H2 - > CH3OH + H2O) and Penn State researchers have
used archaebacteria to convert CO2 and electricity to methane.
Regardless of how the debate is resolved, the ancestor of the eukaryotic nucleocytoplasm must have separated from
the archaebacteria early in, or even before, the era when the major archaebacterial groups arose.
There is an active dispute as to whether some of
the archaebacteria are more closely related to the eukaryotic nucleocytoplasm than are others (proponents of the differing views are James Lake of the University of California at Los Angeles and Carl Woese of the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign).
«The nucleocytoplasmic component of the eukaryotic cell branches off very early in the evolutionary radiation of
the archaebacteria.
But when his team compared DNA sequences from the bacteria in the rock samples with those available in databases, he discovered an entire microbial ecosystem consisting of a wide variety of
both archaebacteria and eubacteria, common «modern» bacteria that normally take up residence in lush places such as cheese and humans.
This discovery means there are not two lines of descent of life but three:
the archaebacteria, the true bacteria and the eukaryotes
We worked together also to identify a branch of chaperonins that are present in the cytosol of
both archaebacteria and eukaryotes.»
They determined the structure of the fly protein's PAZ domain and
the archaebacteria full - length protein.
After several stalled efforts, they abandoned human Argonaute in favor of
an archaebacteria form, despite skepticism from colleagues.