Eli5: What exactly are archaea?
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Archaea are a group of single-celled organisms. Along with the bacteria and the eukaryotes (which include all multicellular life, including you and me) they are one of the three main domains of life, the earliest branches from the origins of life on Earth.
Achaea are superficially similar to bacteria, being single cells without a nucleus. However a study of their genes suggests that they are more closely related to the eukaryotes, and that eukaryotes may have themselves evolved from archaea.
It was initially thought that all archaea were extremophiles, organisms that only live in extremely hostile environments that others cannot tolerate such as hydrothermal vents and salt lakes. However, we now know that archaea are present all over the world, including in oceanic plankton and the human microbiome. There is, however, no known example of an archaea pathogen.
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