The traditional three domains of taxonomy are: Eukarya, which contains animals, plants, fungi and almost all multicellular life. Bacteria, which is a vast group of mainly single-celled organisms.

Indeed, archaea and bacteria appear very similar biologically (members of both groups consist of tiny cells without much internal structure) and different from eukaryotes. However, until ...

Archaea—one of the three primary domains of life alongside bacteria and eukaryotes—are often overlooked and sometimes mistaken for bacteria due to their single-celled nature and lack of a nucleus.

The study was published in the journal Cell. Ten years ago, nobody knew that Asgard archaea even existed. In 2015, researchers examining deep-sea sediments near the underwater volcano Loki ...