The genetic code is the recipe for life, and provides the instructions for how to make proteins, generally using just 20 amino acids. But certain groups of microbes have an expanded genetic code, in ...

Single-celled archaea microbes pack their DNA into flexible coils that expand and stretch much like a Slinky does. This kind of molecular gymnastics had never been seen before in other organisms and ...

Maddy has a degree in biochemistry from the University of York and specializes in reporting on health, medicine, and genetics. Maddy has a degree in biochemistry from the University of York and ...

Led by Jizhong Zhou, Ph.D., the director of the Institute for Environmental Genomics at the University of Oklahoma, an international research team conducted a long term experiment that found that ...

Hyperthermophilic archaea are true survival experts. They thrive in boiling hot springs and deep-sea vents—environments lethal to nearly all other forms of life. Subscribe to our newsletter for the ...

An elusive marine microbe, once known only by its DNA, has finally been cultured in the lab and could grant hints as to how eukaryotic life originated, researchers reported August 8 in a preprint ...

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 ...

A newly discovered phylum of Archaea, Brockarchaeota, can break down plant and organic matter without releasing methane. An international collaboration between scientists based in the USA and China, ...

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 ...

Every summer from 2013 to 2015, Dimitry Sorokin waded into the shallow, briny, alkaline lakes of Siberia’s Kulunda Steppe. Pale carbonate minerals crusted the pools’ edges, where lambs, too young to ...

A family tree showing representatives of the major groups (phyla) of microbes in different colors. Names in red are the first 56 genomes sequenced for the Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea.