Asgardarchaea: The Ancient Norse gods of Microbes

Welcome to ArchaeaCast! In our third episode, our hosts Priyanka Chatterjee and Connor Hines talk about Asgardarcheota, Norse mythology named Archaea! In the second part of the episode, Dr. Alex Phillips interviews Prof. Brett Baker, from the University of Texas at Austin.

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For nomenclature changes, current nomenclature can be found here

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Sources

Scientists Break Record By Finding Northernmost Hydrothermal Vent Field

Complex archaea that bridge the gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes

Cultured Asgard Archaea Shed Light on Eukaryogenesis

Genomic reconstruction of a novel, deeply branched sediment archaeal phylum with pathways for acetogenesis and sulfur reduction

Asgard archaea illuminate the origin of eukaryotic cellular complexity

Isolation of an archaeon at the prokaryote–eukaryote interface

Casting light on Asgardarchaeota metabolism in a sunlit microoxic niche

Fantastic article on the history of Metagenomics

Press release which includes the E3 image from JAMSTEC, and a great video on E3 from JAMSTEC.

Other work cited:

Booth A, Doolittle WF. Eukaryogenesis, how special really? Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015 Aug 18;112(33):10278-85. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1421376112. Epub 2015 Apr 16. PMID: 25883267; PMCID: PMC4547297.

Jørgensen, Steffen Leth, et al. "Quantitative and phylogenetic study of the Deep Sea Archaeal Group in sediments of the Arctic mid-ocean spreading ridge." Frontiers in microbiology (2013)

Stackebrandt E, Frederiksen W, Garrity GM, Grimont PAD, Kämpfer P, Maiden MCJ, Nesme X, Rosselló-Mora R, Swings J, Trüper HG, Vauterin L, Ward AC, Whitman WB. Report of the ad hoc committee for the re-evaluation of the species definition in bacteriology. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol. 2002 May;52(Pt 3):1043-1047. doi: 10.1099/00207713-52-3-1043. PMID: 12054223.

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