Archaea
From EvoWiki
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The Archaea (historically Archaebacteria) are a domain of prokaryotic organisms. Archaea are like bacteria, in that they lack a nucleus and other complex organelles and share a number of other traits with bacteria. However, they are very divergent from other bacteria in many respects and are currently classified as one of the three fundamental domains of life.
Archaea include most of the "extremophiles", species which thrive in extreme conditions of temperature and chemical concentrations. Extremophiles can be found around deep sea hydrothermal vents.
Until the 1970s the Archaebacteria were considered to be a kingdom of the Prokaryote domain, but molecular and genetic analysis by Carl Woese extablished the Archaea as a separate domain. Among these differences are the structure of the lipid bilayer in the cell membrane and their metabolism.
See also
- ArchaeaWeb -- News and information on archaea and extremophiles
- The Jarrell Laboratory -- Ken Jarrell is one of the world's experts on the archaeal flagellum, an evolutionary analog of the bacterial flagellum
- Wikipedia: Archaea
