Eli5: What exactly are archaea?
In: 1
There are three domains of life – Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota
Eukaryota is the easiest to explain – they have a casing around the nucleus called a nuclear envelope. Basically, Eukaryotes separate their DNA from the rest of the cell. Eukaryotes include all plants, animals, and fungi. Almost all Eukaryotes (with maybe a few exceptions) use mitochondria to produce energy from food.
Bacteria and Archaea do not do that, so they are called Prokaryotes – they dk not have nuclear envelopes and they do not use mitochondria. The differences between those two domains are a bit more complex.
Archaea use a different chemical to make their outer membrane than bacteria do. They also use different structures for movement, and can thrive in extreme environments bacteria cannot (extreme temperature, high salt, etc.)
We weren’t even aware of some of these differences until relatively recently. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that DNA sequencing showed Archaea to be as genetically distant from bacteria as bacteria is from humans.
Latest Answers