Mastodawn

How these strange #cells may explain the origin of complex life
Asgard archaea bear traits that hint at how #eukaryotes emerged
#Archaea: single-celled organisms that look much like bacteria. 10ya, new group called #AsgardArchaea was identified in sediments from Atlantic. Nothing like us: They live mostly in places with little or no oxygen, and almost unbelievably ancient, perhaps 3B yr. Yet their #DNA shows they are close to humans on tree of life
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cells-origin-of-life-asgard-archaea
https://archive.ph/DysBo

How these strange cells may explain the origin of complex life

The tiny pantheon known as the Asgard archaea bear traits that hint at how plants, animals and fungi emerged on Earth.

Science News

Chuck Darwin Dec 27

#AsgardArchaea team,
led by @archaeal.bsky.social from @texasscience.bsky.social

— sequencing the DNA collected from the mouth of Rio de la Plata to the continental shelf of Uruguay

to detect #Asgards,
a group of single-celled organisms
-- and our closest microbial relatives on the tree of life❗️

https://bsky.app/profile/schmidtocean.bsky.social/post/3m63yge43q22e

Schmidt Ocean Institute (@schmidtocean.bsky.social)

#AsgardArchaea team, led by @archaeal.bsky.social fr @texasscience.bsky.social — sequencing the DNA collected fr mouth of Rio de la Plata to the continental shelf of Uruguay to detect Asgards, a group of single-celled organisms & our closest microbial relatives on the tree of life. bit.ly/3MdniTH

Bluesky Social

Chuck Darwin Dec 27

ROV pilots filmed this smooth swimming #salp at 324m
during #AsgardArchaea expedition off the coast of Uruguay.

Credit: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute

https://bsky.app/profile/schmidtocean.bsky.social/post/3m7teejy5zk2d

Schmidt Ocean Institute (@schmidtocean.bsky.social)

ROV pilots filmed this smooth swimming salp at 324m during #AsgardArchaea expedition off the coast of Uruguay. Credit: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute

Bluesky Social

ISEP Dec 25

New #ISEPpapers! Eukaryotic Recombinases Duplicated After Divergence From Known Asgard Archaeal RadA: Implications for the Evolution of Sex During Eukaryogenesis https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/17/12/evaf240/8402114 by Lisa Matsuo, @DacksLabECB

#Microbes #Archaea #AsgardArchaea #Eukaryogenesis

michael Jun 30, 2025

#Microtubules in #AsgardArchaea: Maybe we are #archaea after all ...

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00254-5 #science #evolution

michael Jun 23, 2023

22-Jun-2023
‘We’re all Asgardians’: new clues about the origin of complex life
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/993463

NB my feature about #AsgardArchaea came out a month ago (covering a preprint version of this paper among other things), so the magic link should still be functional for another 2 weeks and a bit:

https://proseandpassion.blogspot.com/2023/05/weird-relatives.html #science #evolution #archaea #eukaryotes Nature paper on open access: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06186-2

‘We’re all Asgardians’: new clues about the origin of complex life

According to a new study, eukaryotes — complex life forms with nuclei in their cells, including all the world’s plants, animals, insects and fungi — trace their roots to a common Asgard archaean ancestor. That means eukaryotes are, in the parlance of evolutionary biologists, a “well-nested clade” within Asgard archaea, similar to how birds are one of several groups within a larger group called dinosaurs, sharing a common ancestor.

EurekAlert!

Lukas VFN 🇪🇺Dec 21, 2022

Shedding light On The Origin Of Complex Life Forms https://astrobiology.com/2022/12/shedding-light-on-the-origin-of-complex-life-forms.html #protists #archaea #eukaryogenesis

#Actin cytoskeleton and complex cell architecture in an Asgard archaeon https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05550-y

A complex actin-based #cytoskeleton predated the emergence of the first #eukaryotes and was a crucial feature in the evolution of the #AsgardArchaea phylum by scaffolding elaborate cellular structures.

Shedding light On The Origin Of Complex Life Forms - Astrobiology

How did the complex organisms on Earth arise? This is one of the big open questions in biology.

Astrobiology