The genomes of giant viruses, such as the recently discovered Mimivirus that infects amoebae, are larger than the genomes of many bacteria and some archaea (Raoult & Forterre 2008). Viruses ...

Viruses, then, may have existed before bacteria, archaea, or eukaryotes (Figure 4; Prangishvili et al. 2006). Most biologists now agree that the very first replicating molecules consisted of RNA ...

Today, very little is known about how living archaea protect themselves from threats like bacteria or viruses, so it's difficult to explore such hypotheses in any detail. Researchers at UT have ...

Another popular theory states that viruses evolved from degenerated bacteria or archaea that lost most of the genetic instructions for carrying out metabolism and forming cells. There are many ...

Viruses can replicate only inside a host’s cell. Hosts of viruses include animals, plants, bacteria, fungi, and archaea. Many viruses have evolved to infect multiple kinds of hosts, while some ...

Ten years ago, nobody knew that Asgard archaea even existed. In 2015, however, researchers examining deep-sea sediments discovered gene fragments that indicated a new and previously undiscovered ...

Vaginal microbes play a huge role in overall health, but researchers know relatively little about them. Citizen science could help change that.

Based on a comparison of known virus types and an icosahedral virus isolated from a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park, the team found that coat proteins in all viral types that inhabit the three ...

“This should have a major effect on textbook treatment of these subjects.” Since the late 1980s, all life forms have been split into three groups on the phylogenetic tree of life: bacteria, archaea, ...

The human microbiome comprises bacteria, archaea, viruses, and eukaryotes which reside within and outside our bodies. These organisms impact human physiology, both in health and in disease ...

The Doctoral Programme in Microbiology and Biotechnology (MBDP) brings together branches of the entire field of microbiology, i.e., bacteria, archaea, eukaryotic microorganisms and viruses in any ...