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The introduction to this article currently states : "Archaea are further divided into four phyla".
Five phyla are listed in the box to the right. Looking at the individual articles, one states :"Thaumarchaeota are a newly-proposed phylum of the Archaea".
The current classification section states : "estimates of the total number of phyla in the archaea range from 18 to 23, of which only 8 phyla have representatives".
This field is obviously in flux, and I am not a SME.
I suggest that someone rewrite the introductory statement, so that there is at least a hint that the number of phyla is not precisely four. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.52.224.9 ( talk) 22:04, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
I was just wondering why there was no mention in this seciton about
Thermoplasma or
Ferroplasma which do not have cell walls and instead resemble more of an ameboid shape
http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Image:Thermoplasma_2.jpg
Additionally the second paragraph of the introduction has this odd statement "Generally, archaea and bacteria are quite similar in size and shape," when the morphology section directly contradicts this statement.--
Jonthecheet (
talk)
19:47, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
The article makes this claim when contrasting bacerial and archaean flagella. I've only read the abstract of the reference provided, but it looks like it only discusses the archaean flagellum, not the evolution of the bacterial flagellum. I always thought that it was believed that the Type III secretory protein evolved from the flagellum, not the other way round, because its only use is in pathogenicity and so it must have evolved after the organisms they parasitise whereas the bacterial flagellum is found in a wide range of bacteria from earlier on. I've only found 1 rather old reference to support this: Nguyen L., Paulsen I. T., Tchieu J., Hueck C. J., Saier M. H. Jr. 2000. Phylogenetic analyses of the constituents of Type III protein secretion systems. J. Mol. Microbiol. Biotechnl. 2(2):125-44 (freely available here: [1]) Can anyone here confirm if this is the current consensus? If so, perhaps the article should be changed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.64.178.86 ( talk) 14:05, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
I removed the words in energy metabolism that is mistakenly citing articles about Archae being involved in Anammox.
REMOVED: in anammox metabolism
Riennn ( talk) 14:01, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, I missed that, but it had not been fixed indeed. Archaea somehow contribute indirectly to anammox by feeding it with NO2, in the same way bacterial ammonia oxidizers do. I think it is out of scope here, if we start speaking about the fate of the product of ammonia oxidation by Archaea, this article would have to include a paragraph about importance of Archaea in removal of nitrogen from aquatic ecosystems. I will try to include all this in the denitrification article, which needs serious additions. Riennn ( talk) 06:19, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I certainly can do this although I am not an expert either...
I don't think anyone can pretend being an expert on archaea I've been thinking about a person to ask to read it through...
Riennn ( talk) 05:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
I do not see any plankton in the image. Is the plankton blue or yellow? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.24.23.199 ( talk) 07:10, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
>If you believe there is such an error, please present it on the Talk:Archaea page
1:'"Although archaea have, in the past, been classed with bacteria as prokaryotes, this classification has been described as outdated, since it fails to distinguish between the three very distinct domains of life"
>three very distinct domains of life< are "new product" of new classification, not the reason to update the classification. In other words, until new classification was introduced, the stated fault ("since it fails") was nonexistent.
Common example : John Sulfolobus & Ann Escherichia: Although John married Ann, this marriage was outdated, since they fails to distinguish they are divorced.
Anyway this sentence was redundant. It duplicate better written information in : In the past they were viewed as an unusual group of bacteria and named archaebacteria but since the Archaea have an independent evolutionary history and show many differences in their biochemistry from other forms of life, they are now classified as a separate domain in the three-domain system .
2 "Archaea are further divided into four recognized phyla."
Xook1kai Choa6aur ( talk) 05:08, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
"These two groups were originally named the Archaebacteria and Eubacteria and treated as kingdoms or subkingdoms, which Woese and Fox termed Urkingdoms". My problem here is with the word *subkingdom*. In my amateur layman understanding, the groups Archaebacteria and Eubacteria must have been regarded either as kingdoms or as something higher, bigger than kingdoms, which would then be something like superkingdoms or megakingdoms - which is why, as I understand, we now work with domains. In any case, Urkingdom or Urkönigreich can never mean sub-kingdom, as Ur refers to something either older or greater than the word it precedes. Duchiffre
"Archaea are genetically distinct from bacteria and eukaryotes, with up to 15% of the proteins encoded by any one archaeal genome being unique to the Archaea,"
does this mean to say that up to 15% of the genome is unique, or up to 15% of the proteins created by the genome are unique (e.g. it creates "pseudoglobin" whereas no known eukaryte genome produces this protein) (and thus, presumably, much more than 15% of the genome is unique)? As worded, it seems to refer to the latter, but it also seems from the context that it is supposed to refer to the former. Whichever it is, I think it needs to be made clearer. Kevin Baas talk 20:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
The navigation box for gene expression (akin to an book index for the topic) (link: Template:MolBioGeneExp) was edit some time back to include archeal translation and transcription, two pages that do not exist. As several months have passed, it is clear that the edit was for form as the other two domains had respectiove pages. Could an archean microbiologist add these pages if possible or redirect them correctly (I would assume to eukaryotic transcription and to prokaryotic translation). Thanks -- Squidonius ( talk) 13:21, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
"Ether bonds are chemically more resistant then ester bonds, which might contribute to the ability of some archaea to survive at extremes of temperature and in very acidic or alkaline environments."
This doesn't make sense: why would a less chemically resistant bond increase survivability? Surely it should be "Ester bonds are chemically more resistant then ether bonds..." Hasname ( talk) 17:56, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
I was having a really dense moment, confusing esters and ethers :s. Sorry to waste your time.
Hasname ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:33, 19 May 2010 (UTC).
{{editsemiprotected}}
spelling error: under "Structure, composition development, operation", the first bullet point under membranes, it reads"... In ester lipids this is an ester bond, whereas in ether lipids this is an ether bond. Ether bonds are chemically more resistant then ester bonds...." The "then" in the last sentence needs to be "than."
Mikejones2255 ( talk) 11:50, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Copy-edits complete. Reduced word count by ~20%. Enjoy. Lfstevens ( talk) 02:22, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Copy-edits complete. Reduced word count by ~20%. Enjoy. Lfstevens ( talk) 02:43, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Tim, I have just finished reading two articles by Thomas Cavalier-Smith in which he puts forward a very convincing case for the relatively recent emergence of Archaea (only 850 mya!!). In his Neomuran hypothesis he proposes that archaeabacteria and eukaryotes are sisters, rather than archaeabacteria being ancestral to eukaryotes. In addition to making a number of convincing arguments based upon molecular and cellular data, he also points out that there is no definitive paleontological evidence for archaean or eukaryotic fossils prior to 850 mya. He also notes that steranes which have been used as biomarkers to indicate the presence of eukaryotes 2.7 bya is unreliable due to the presence of these molecules in Arabobacteria and several other Eubacterial species. His analysis of how quantum evolution distorts the supposed "molecular clock" and the cladistic and phylogenetic conclusions drawn from such techniques is quite compelling.
I have long admired the work of Woese, Margulis, Schopf and others working on the origin and evolution of early life but these articles have forced me to radically reconsider my former understanding on these issues. In many ways Cavalier-Smith has struck at the heart of many burning questions and contradictions in the view put forward by the mainstream of the biological community. At minimum, I would think that these ideas deserve space in this article on Archaea. I would greatly appreciate your feedback on these issues before making any additions to this article.
Selected Articles:
This issue of Philosophical Transactions is dedicated to the topic... http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/361/1470.toc
Thomas Cavalier-Smith - http://ijs.sgmjournals.org/cgi/reprint/52/1/7 - The neomuran origin of archaebacteria, the negibacterial root of the universal tree and bacterial megaclassification - International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Mircobiology (2002) 52, 297-354
Thomas Cavalier-Smith - http://ijs.sgmjournals.org/cgi/reprint/52/2/297 - The phagotrophic origin of eukaryotes and phylogenetic classification of Protozoa - International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Mircobiology (2002) 52, 297-354
Jtwsaddress42 ( talk) 19:32, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
In the section 'Current classification' a sentence starts "Most of the culturable medo". The word 'medo' is not in the Oxford or Cambridge online dictionaries. What does it mean or is it a typo? It seems surprising that an article of the day should use a word so obscure it is not in standard dictionaries. Dudley Miles ( talk) 19:59, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Okay, it's kind of a nit. But the use of "spore" in the lead section clearly refers to endospores, yet it links an article that heavily emphasizes reproductive spores and barely mentions endospores at all. I prefer the more specific term. Yaush ( talk) 22:58, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
The first sentence is a poor definition. It reads (to a layman) like any arbitrary group of microorganisms is called an "Archaea." It should be defined as a category of microorganisms, not a group. 129.10.173.73 ( talk) 23:05, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
I recommend this article be split, because it is about 90KB, and it should be split in 2 or 3 sections. Aerosprite the Legendary ( talk) 02:51, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Under section "Relation to Eukaryotes", this sentence can be improved
Is it correct to say the following:
- Pgan002 ( talk) 07:11, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
The following sentence - referring to PCR - is ambiguous and in some readings, tautologous.
What exactly "remains difficult" ? Allowing? Detecting? Culturing? And if it is now allowed, why still difficult?
And why is any remaining difficulty relevant to the existence of the New Domain?
Please consider rewording, or maybe just drop the last clause.
[But thanks for a really interesting article] Shannock9 ( talk) 14:20, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
The newly added section on Phylogeny includes several Candidatus forms. They are currently formatted as:
However, per the Candidatus article, it looks like they should be formatted as:
I'm not an expert, so I will just note this here and not change anything. -- Donald Albury 00:57, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
This article includes the assertion that:
This assertion is supported by a reference to an article in Nature [May 2006] by Dr. Norman Pace. Several microbiologists have expressed disagreement with Dr. Pace's ideas (e.g. William Whitman; Michael Dolan). I have seen no sign that the wider microbiological community is abandoning the term "prokaryote". This assertion may therefore raise a POV issue.
In Nov 2010, I (quite gently) addressed this by softening the assertion to read "...this classification is regarded by some as outdated."
This edit was reverted (deliberately or accidentally) by user Pot in April 2011, as part of a larger and well-executed "tidy up" edit. Pot does not appear to be a subject matter expert (no offence intended - neither am I!), so it is my intention to re-apply my original edit unless someone objects here, providing citable evidence that the term "prokaryote" is now regarded as obsolete or outdated by a majority of the relevant professional community. FredV ( talk) 16:39, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
In origin & evolution section, "the term prokaryote's only surviving meaning is "not a eukaryote", limiting its value" - surely prokaryote still means not having a nucleus!? Fig ( talk) 17:31, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
"to work out which prokaryotes are genuinely related to each other"
what about "genetically" rather than "genuinely" (
Martin |
talk •
contribs
04:21, 16 May 2012 (UTC))
I’ve been trying to make the recently added section “Relationship to other prokaryotes” more concise and less repetitive. (I also think this might be undue weight on a particular hypothesis, since this person seems to think the Archaea are not a separate domain. Perhaps this view should only be cut down to a sentence or two – I’m not sure how much weight it should be given).
(Interjection – the argument actually doesn’t make sense to me anyways. Of course the antibiotics for which archaea are resistant but bacteria are not will be ones that act on genes that are different between archaea and bacteria. If they acted on genes that were not different, then both groups would be sensitive. And any competitive selective pressure will promote colonization of new niches – there is no reason to think that antibiotics are special in this regard.)
Anyways, my most recent edit involved making a table summarizing the characteristics of Archaea and the other domains, so that I could replace the lists that were inserted into the text. I also added a few more characteristics, as well as citations. This is the first time I’ve made a table, so please let me know if there’s anything I could have done differently.
I didn’t remove any actual content in my first two edits (as I commented in the edit summary). Even now, almost all of the information is actually still there despite the large change in size. This time, though, I did remove a number of things that look to be either personal opinion or not necessary to the overall point (e.g. “some Archaea” showing positive Gram stains is not evidence for a link between Archaea and Gram positive bacteria, because the rest of them show negative stains). I then moved a couple of sentences on one of Woese’s proposals upwards, since he is already being discussed above, and added a few other phrases as well.
The section also wasn’t using citations properly – a number of them didn’t address the conclusions they were cited for, one didn’t link to an actual page, one was from a philosophy paper, etc. Three citations were being used to support the statement that Gram positives and archaea share the characteristic of having a single lipid membrane (I just left one); four citations were being used to support what was previously the third last sentence in the section (I only have access to two of them, but neither seemed to support the statement – I removed those two, and it would be great if someone could check the others); etc. I also removed a sentence from the section above (added by the same editor) for which the source was another wiki, and which made a slightly different claim from the one sourced here (besides which, I think the statement itself was a non sequitur)... There’s also quite a few that I didn’t have time to check.
I still feel that there should be more changes, but that will probably be enough for me, at least for now. I also think an expansion to the following section (which is the mainstream view, yet is still much shorter even after my changes) would also be in order. Arc de Ciel ( talk) 09:50, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
The important fact that the group of organisms known as Archaea constitute a domain is currently only implicitly presented in the second sentence of the lead:
This is, in my opinion, insufficiently conspicuous. Additionally, the word "this" in "this domain" has no antecedent – which domain? none has been mentioned before. To address this issue, and suspecting that not all readers will know that in the context of biology the term "domain" has a specific meaning related to the taxonomy of organisms, I expanded the lead to:
However, this was reverted with edit summary rationale: new wording is redundant; all domains are in the taxonomy of organisms. What do others think – just redundant, or an actual improvement? -- Lambiam 10:21, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
Please look at the second paragraph, which is entirely about the classification of the domain. The status of domain does not need to appear in every paragraph. Rather, the article already has an entire body section on this issue, which in turn is summarized in the second paragraph of the article summary. As the article currently stands, the first sentences describe the organisms that are members, to describe what they are like, and then the second paragraph describes the grouping, explaining how it differs from other such groupings. The above proposals would conflate this distinction by trying to discuss both the taxon and its member organisms all at once, which is more likely to confuse readers than to assist them. -- EncycloPetey ( talk) 21:09, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
Forgive me if this incorrect, but aren't there some significant differences between Archae and the other two domains with regard to the codon/amino acid pairings? It seems to me that this is one of the most striking points to be made in describing this domain, yet I see no mention of it. It also has implications for how life evolves and has evolved on earth beyond merely differentiating the Archae from the other domains. Hopefully an expert in the area could rectify this issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.73.178.51 ( talk) 20:13, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
Carl R. Woese, Archaebacteria: The Third Domain of Life Missed by Biologists for Decades http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=archaebacteria-the-third — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shoshie8 ( talk • contribs) 14:12, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
I don't know if this question would be better in some already established section on the Talk page - it's so big that I figured to just put it in a new section.. Would it be reasonable to put either a main section or in the lead paragraphs a one or two sentence description of *when* the idea of Archaea as a kingdom came into existence/acceptance?
The "worldview" I learned in high school in 1994-97 was of only three kingdoms: Prokaryotes, Eukaryotes, and Fungi. I don't know whether the idea of splitting off an Archaea kingdom from Bacteria was "around" at that time or not - I remember hearing about it at some point then I think. But I just read the statement on the Eukaryote#Relationship to Archaea page that Eukaryotes are actually closer to Archaea than to Bacteria, and had no idea of that. From the sources on that page, it looks like that idea "came to be" around 2000-2006 - but I have no idea whether it's made it's way into "newly-written" bio textbooks or not, or is still mostly just in the primary literature.
A lot of this is scattered throughout the Kingdom_(biology)#Recent_developments:_six_kingdoms_or_more.3F, so it may not belong here at all, even in the lead overview. Jimw338 ( talk) 20:23, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
I just made three changes to this article:
1. Deleted the ugly pronunciation respellings (PR). As I explained in the talk for Wikipedia:Pronunciation respelling key, I don't like PR, and in that talk, kwami and CUSH explained why PR is undesirable.
2. Added an alternative singular, arch(a)ea, the singular that I prefer (using the same form for both singular and plural). In English there is a widespread shift among nouns of Greek or Latin origin that traditionally have singulars ending in -on or -um and plurals ending in -a, as follows (singular given first): -on/um, -a → -a, -a → -a, -as (the lattermost plural being regular):
In the case of archaea and bacteria, I am in the second stage of the shift (bacteria, bacteria). I don't think this shift is something to be stigmatized, but a natural part of language change, regularization. English has too many irregular plurals.
3. I changed "may be" more than four phyla to "almost certainly" more than four. There are about about 15 kingdoms of eukaryotes, and eukaryotes are much bigger than archaea, so there should be much more diversity among the archaea. In fact, I wonder if the four recognized phyla of archaea should be upgraded to kingdoms.
Does everyone approve of my changes?-- Solomonfromfinland ( talk) 15:44, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
I think that by presenting only the diagram from Ciccarelli et al. (2006), the article does not present a fully balanced, neutral account of views on the relationship between the three domains. As far as I can tell, this remains disputed, with three distinct hypotheses current, of which neither the Ciccarelli et al. (2006) version (three monophyletic domains) nor the Cavalier-Smith (2010) version (Archaea are recent) is the most commonly held view. I've tried to correct this via an addition to the article showing three possible versions of the phylogeny of the domains. Peter coxhead ( talk) 13:27, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
In articles such as this, when it unclear whether one is talking about a primitive organism (Archaea) or an eon of geologic time (Archaean eon) the adjective 'archaean' can be ambiguous. To mitigate this ambiguity, I have changed most instances of 'archaean' referring to the organism to 'archaeal', which I think is less ambiguous because it seems to be rarely used in connection with the eon. CharlesHBennett ( talk) — Preceding undated comment added 11:16, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
The article contradicts itself on the issue of introns in Archea. The table comparing domains says that Archaea and Prokaryotes have no introns. The Genetics section says Archaea have introns in some genes. I believe the latter is correct but I don't have a reference. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jason.Rafe.Miller ( talk • contribs) 00:04, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
I'm no life scientist, but wouldn't "Halobacteria" be in the bacteria domain intend of Archaea? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.67.173.198 ( talk) 01:31, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
The introduction to this article currently states : "Archaea are further divided into four phyla".
Five phyla are listed in the box to the right. Looking at the individual articles, one states :"Thaumarchaeota are a newly-proposed phylum of the Archaea".
The current classification section states : "estimates of the total number of phyla in the archaea range from 18 to 23, of which only 8 phyla have representatives".
This field is obviously in flux, and I am not a SME.
I suggest that someone rewrite the introductory statement, so that there is at least a hint that the number of phyla is not precisely four. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.52.224.9 ( talk) 22:04, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
I was just wondering why there was no mention in this seciton about
Thermoplasma or
Ferroplasma which do not have cell walls and instead resemble more of an ameboid shape
http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Image:Thermoplasma_2.jpg
Additionally the second paragraph of the introduction has this odd statement "Generally, archaea and bacteria are quite similar in size and shape," when the morphology section directly contradicts this statement.--
Jonthecheet (
talk)
19:47, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
The article makes this claim when contrasting bacerial and archaean flagella. I've only read the abstract of the reference provided, but it looks like it only discusses the archaean flagellum, not the evolution of the bacterial flagellum. I always thought that it was believed that the Type III secretory protein evolved from the flagellum, not the other way round, because its only use is in pathogenicity and so it must have evolved after the organisms they parasitise whereas the bacterial flagellum is found in a wide range of bacteria from earlier on. I've only found 1 rather old reference to support this: Nguyen L., Paulsen I. T., Tchieu J., Hueck C. J., Saier M. H. Jr. 2000. Phylogenetic analyses of the constituents of Type III protein secretion systems. J. Mol. Microbiol. Biotechnl. 2(2):125-44 (freely available here: [1]) Can anyone here confirm if this is the current consensus? If so, perhaps the article should be changed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.64.178.86 ( talk) 14:05, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
I removed the words in energy metabolism that is mistakenly citing articles about Archae being involved in Anammox.
REMOVED: in anammox metabolism
Riennn ( talk) 14:01, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, I missed that, but it had not been fixed indeed. Archaea somehow contribute indirectly to anammox by feeding it with NO2, in the same way bacterial ammonia oxidizers do. I think it is out of scope here, if we start speaking about the fate of the product of ammonia oxidation by Archaea, this article would have to include a paragraph about importance of Archaea in removal of nitrogen from aquatic ecosystems. I will try to include all this in the denitrification article, which needs serious additions. Riennn ( talk) 06:19, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I certainly can do this although I am not an expert either...
I don't think anyone can pretend being an expert on archaea I've been thinking about a person to ask to read it through...
Riennn ( talk) 05:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
I do not see any plankton in the image. Is the plankton blue or yellow? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.24.23.199 ( talk) 07:10, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
>If you believe there is such an error, please present it on the Talk:Archaea page
1:'"Although archaea have, in the past, been classed with bacteria as prokaryotes, this classification has been described as outdated, since it fails to distinguish between the three very distinct domains of life"
>three very distinct domains of life< are "new product" of new classification, not the reason to update the classification. In other words, until new classification was introduced, the stated fault ("since it fails") was nonexistent.
Common example : John Sulfolobus & Ann Escherichia: Although John married Ann, this marriage was outdated, since they fails to distinguish they are divorced.
Anyway this sentence was redundant. It duplicate better written information in : In the past they were viewed as an unusual group of bacteria and named archaebacteria but since the Archaea have an independent evolutionary history and show many differences in their biochemistry from other forms of life, they are now classified as a separate domain in the three-domain system .
2 "Archaea are further divided into four recognized phyla."
Xook1kai Choa6aur ( talk) 05:08, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
"These two groups were originally named the Archaebacteria and Eubacteria and treated as kingdoms or subkingdoms, which Woese and Fox termed Urkingdoms". My problem here is with the word *subkingdom*. In my amateur layman understanding, the groups Archaebacteria and Eubacteria must have been regarded either as kingdoms or as something higher, bigger than kingdoms, which would then be something like superkingdoms or megakingdoms - which is why, as I understand, we now work with domains. In any case, Urkingdom or Urkönigreich can never mean sub-kingdom, as Ur refers to something either older or greater than the word it precedes. Duchiffre
"Archaea are genetically distinct from bacteria and eukaryotes, with up to 15% of the proteins encoded by any one archaeal genome being unique to the Archaea,"
does this mean to say that up to 15% of the genome is unique, or up to 15% of the proteins created by the genome are unique (e.g. it creates "pseudoglobin" whereas no known eukaryte genome produces this protein) (and thus, presumably, much more than 15% of the genome is unique)? As worded, it seems to refer to the latter, but it also seems from the context that it is supposed to refer to the former. Whichever it is, I think it needs to be made clearer. Kevin Baas talk 20:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
The navigation box for gene expression (akin to an book index for the topic) (link: Template:MolBioGeneExp) was edit some time back to include archeal translation and transcription, two pages that do not exist. As several months have passed, it is clear that the edit was for form as the other two domains had respectiove pages. Could an archean microbiologist add these pages if possible or redirect them correctly (I would assume to eukaryotic transcription and to prokaryotic translation). Thanks -- Squidonius ( talk) 13:21, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
"Ether bonds are chemically more resistant then ester bonds, which might contribute to the ability of some archaea to survive at extremes of temperature and in very acidic or alkaline environments."
This doesn't make sense: why would a less chemically resistant bond increase survivability? Surely it should be "Ester bonds are chemically more resistant then ether bonds..." Hasname ( talk) 17:56, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
I was having a really dense moment, confusing esters and ethers :s. Sorry to waste your time.
Hasname ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:33, 19 May 2010 (UTC).
{{editsemiprotected}}
spelling error: under "Structure, composition development, operation", the first bullet point under membranes, it reads"... In ester lipids this is an ester bond, whereas in ether lipids this is an ether bond. Ether bonds are chemically more resistant then ester bonds...." The "then" in the last sentence needs to be "than."
Mikejones2255 ( talk) 11:50, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
Copy-edits complete. Reduced word count by ~20%. Enjoy. Lfstevens ( talk) 02:22, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Copy-edits complete. Reduced word count by ~20%. Enjoy. Lfstevens ( talk) 02:43, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
Tim, I have just finished reading two articles by Thomas Cavalier-Smith in which he puts forward a very convincing case for the relatively recent emergence of Archaea (only 850 mya!!). In his Neomuran hypothesis he proposes that archaeabacteria and eukaryotes are sisters, rather than archaeabacteria being ancestral to eukaryotes. In addition to making a number of convincing arguments based upon molecular and cellular data, he also points out that there is no definitive paleontological evidence for archaean or eukaryotic fossils prior to 850 mya. He also notes that steranes which have been used as biomarkers to indicate the presence of eukaryotes 2.7 bya is unreliable due to the presence of these molecules in Arabobacteria and several other Eubacterial species. His analysis of how quantum evolution distorts the supposed "molecular clock" and the cladistic and phylogenetic conclusions drawn from such techniques is quite compelling.
I have long admired the work of Woese, Margulis, Schopf and others working on the origin and evolution of early life but these articles have forced me to radically reconsider my former understanding on these issues. In many ways Cavalier-Smith has struck at the heart of many burning questions and contradictions in the view put forward by the mainstream of the biological community. At minimum, I would think that these ideas deserve space in this article on Archaea. I would greatly appreciate your feedback on these issues before making any additions to this article.
Selected Articles:
This issue of Philosophical Transactions is dedicated to the topic... http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/361/1470.toc
Thomas Cavalier-Smith - http://ijs.sgmjournals.org/cgi/reprint/52/1/7 - The neomuran origin of archaebacteria, the negibacterial root of the universal tree and bacterial megaclassification - International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Mircobiology (2002) 52, 297-354
Thomas Cavalier-Smith - http://ijs.sgmjournals.org/cgi/reprint/52/2/297 - The phagotrophic origin of eukaryotes and phylogenetic classification of Protozoa - International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Mircobiology (2002) 52, 297-354
Jtwsaddress42 ( talk) 19:32, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
In the section 'Current classification' a sentence starts "Most of the culturable medo". The word 'medo' is not in the Oxford or Cambridge online dictionaries. What does it mean or is it a typo? It seems surprising that an article of the day should use a word so obscure it is not in standard dictionaries. Dudley Miles ( talk) 19:59, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Okay, it's kind of a nit. But the use of "spore" in the lead section clearly refers to endospores, yet it links an article that heavily emphasizes reproductive spores and barely mentions endospores at all. I prefer the more specific term. Yaush ( talk) 22:58, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
The first sentence is a poor definition. It reads (to a layman) like any arbitrary group of microorganisms is called an "Archaea." It should be defined as a category of microorganisms, not a group. 129.10.173.73 ( talk) 23:05, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
I recommend this article be split, because it is about 90KB, and it should be split in 2 or 3 sections. Aerosprite the Legendary ( talk) 02:51, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
Under section "Relation to Eukaryotes", this sentence can be improved
Is it correct to say the following:
- Pgan002 ( talk) 07:11, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
The following sentence - referring to PCR - is ambiguous and in some readings, tautologous.
What exactly "remains difficult" ? Allowing? Detecting? Culturing? And if it is now allowed, why still difficult?
And why is any remaining difficulty relevant to the existence of the New Domain?
Please consider rewording, or maybe just drop the last clause.
[But thanks for a really interesting article] Shannock9 ( talk) 14:20, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
The newly added section on Phylogeny includes several Candidatus forms. They are currently formatted as:
However, per the Candidatus article, it looks like they should be formatted as:
I'm not an expert, so I will just note this here and not change anything. -- Donald Albury 00:57, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
This article includes the assertion that:
This assertion is supported by a reference to an article in Nature [May 2006] by Dr. Norman Pace. Several microbiologists have expressed disagreement with Dr. Pace's ideas (e.g. William Whitman; Michael Dolan). I have seen no sign that the wider microbiological community is abandoning the term "prokaryote". This assertion may therefore raise a POV issue.
In Nov 2010, I (quite gently) addressed this by softening the assertion to read "...this classification is regarded by some as outdated."
This edit was reverted (deliberately or accidentally) by user Pot in April 2011, as part of a larger and well-executed "tidy up" edit. Pot does not appear to be a subject matter expert (no offence intended - neither am I!), so it is my intention to re-apply my original edit unless someone objects here, providing citable evidence that the term "prokaryote" is now regarded as obsolete or outdated by a majority of the relevant professional community. FredV ( talk) 16:39, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
In origin & evolution section, "the term prokaryote's only surviving meaning is "not a eukaryote", limiting its value" - surely prokaryote still means not having a nucleus!? Fig ( talk) 17:31, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
"to work out which prokaryotes are genuinely related to each other"
what about "genetically" rather than "genuinely" (
Martin |
talk •
contribs
04:21, 16 May 2012 (UTC))
I’ve been trying to make the recently added section “Relationship to other prokaryotes” more concise and less repetitive. (I also think this might be undue weight on a particular hypothesis, since this person seems to think the Archaea are not a separate domain. Perhaps this view should only be cut down to a sentence or two – I’m not sure how much weight it should be given).
(Interjection – the argument actually doesn’t make sense to me anyways. Of course the antibiotics for which archaea are resistant but bacteria are not will be ones that act on genes that are different between archaea and bacteria. If they acted on genes that were not different, then both groups would be sensitive. And any competitive selective pressure will promote colonization of new niches – there is no reason to think that antibiotics are special in this regard.)
Anyways, my most recent edit involved making a table summarizing the characteristics of Archaea and the other domains, so that I could replace the lists that were inserted into the text. I also added a few more characteristics, as well as citations. This is the first time I’ve made a table, so please let me know if there’s anything I could have done differently.
I didn’t remove any actual content in my first two edits (as I commented in the edit summary). Even now, almost all of the information is actually still there despite the large change in size. This time, though, I did remove a number of things that look to be either personal opinion or not necessary to the overall point (e.g. “some Archaea” showing positive Gram stains is not evidence for a link between Archaea and Gram positive bacteria, because the rest of them show negative stains). I then moved a couple of sentences on one of Woese’s proposals upwards, since he is already being discussed above, and added a few other phrases as well.
The section also wasn’t using citations properly – a number of them didn’t address the conclusions they were cited for, one didn’t link to an actual page, one was from a philosophy paper, etc. Three citations were being used to support the statement that Gram positives and archaea share the characteristic of having a single lipid membrane (I just left one); four citations were being used to support what was previously the third last sentence in the section (I only have access to two of them, but neither seemed to support the statement – I removed those two, and it would be great if someone could check the others); etc. I also removed a sentence from the section above (added by the same editor) for which the source was another wiki, and which made a slightly different claim from the one sourced here (besides which, I think the statement itself was a non sequitur)... There’s also quite a few that I didn’t have time to check.
I still feel that there should be more changes, but that will probably be enough for me, at least for now. I also think an expansion to the following section (which is the mainstream view, yet is still much shorter even after my changes) would also be in order. Arc de Ciel ( talk) 09:50, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
The important fact that the group of organisms known as Archaea constitute a domain is currently only implicitly presented in the second sentence of the lead:
This is, in my opinion, insufficiently conspicuous. Additionally, the word "this" in "this domain" has no antecedent – which domain? none has been mentioned before. To address this issue, and suspecting that not all readers will know that in the context of biology the term "domain" has a specific meaning related to the taxonomy of organisms, I expanded the lead to:
However, this was reverted with edit summary rationale: new wording is redundant; all domains are in the taxonomy of organisms. What do others think – just redundant, or an actual improvement? -- Lambiam 10:21, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
Please look at the second paragraph, which is entirely about the classification of the domain. The status of domain does not need to appear in every paragraph. Rather, the article already has an entire body section on this issue, which in turn is summarized in the second paragraph of the article summary. As the article currently stands, the first sentences describe the organisms that are members, to describe what they are like, and then the second paragraph describes the grouping, explaining how it differs from other such groupings. The above proposals would conflate this distinction by trying to discuss both the taxon and its member organisms all at once, which is more likely to confuse readers than to assist them. -- EncycloPetey ( talk) 21:09, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
Forgive me if this incorrect, but aren't there some significant differences between Archae and the other two domains with regard to the codon/amino acid pairings? It seems to me that this is one of the most striking points to be made in describing this domain, yet I see no mention of it. It also has implications for how life evolves and has evolved on earth beyond merely differentiating the Archae from the other domains. Hopefully an expert in the area could rectify this issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.73.178.51 ( talk) 20:13, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
Carl R. Woese, Archaebacteria: The Third Domain of Life Missed by Biologists for Decades http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=archaebacteria-the-third — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shoshie8 ( talk • contribs) 14:12, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
I don't know if this question would be better in some already established section on the Talk page - it's so big that I figured to just put it in a new section.. Would it be reasonable to put either a main section or in the lead paragraphs a one or two sentence description of *when* the idea of Archaea as a kingdom came into existence/acceptance?
The "worldview" I learned in high school in 1994-97 was of only three kingdoms: Prokaryotes, Eukaryotes, and Fungi. I don't know whether the idea of splitting off an Archaea kingdom from Bacteria was "around" at that time or not - I remember hearing about it at some point then I think. But I just read the statement on the Eukaryote#Relationship to Archaea page that Eukaryotes are actually closer to Archaea than to Bacteria, and had no idea of that. From the sources on that page, it looks like that idea "came to be" around 2000-2006 - but I have no idea whether it's made it's way into "newly-written" bio textbooks or not, or is still mostly just in the primary literature.
A lot of this is scattered throughout the Kingdom_(biology)#Recent_developments:_six_kingdoms_or_more.3F, so it may not belong here at all, even in the lead overview. Jimw338 ( talk) 20:23, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
I just made three changes to this article:
1. Deleted the ugly pronunciation respellings (PR). As I explained in the talk for Wikipedia:Pronunciation respelling key, I don't like PR, and in that talk, kwami and CUSH explained why PR is undesirable.
2. Added an alternative singular, arch(a)ea, the singular that I prefer (using the same form for both singular and plural). In English there is a widespread shift among nouns of Greek or Latin origin that traditionally have singulars ending in -on or -um and plurals ending in -a, as follows (singular given first): -on/um, -a → -a, -a → -a, -as (the lattermost plural being regular):
In the case of archaea and bacteria, I am in the second stage of the shift (bacteria, bacteria). I don't think this shift is something to be stigmatized, but a natural part of language change, regularization. English has too many irregular plurals.
3. I changed "may be" more than four phyla to "almost certainly" more than four. There are about about 15 kingdoms of eukaryotes, and eukaryotes are much bigger than archaea, so there should be much more diversity among the archaea. In fact, I wonder if the four recognized phyla of archaea should be upgraded to kingdoms.
Does everyone approve of my changes?-- Solomonfromfinland ( talk) 15:44, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
I think that by presenting only the diagram from Ciccarelli et al. (2006), the article does not present a fully balanced, neutral account of views on the relationship between the three domains. As far as I can tell, this remains disputed, with three distinct hypotheses current, of which neither the Ciccarelli et al. (2006) version (three monophyletic domains) nor the Cavalier-Smith (2010) version (Archaea are recent) is the most commonly held view. I've tried to correct this via an addition to the article showing three possible versions of the phylogeny of the domains. Peter coxhead ( talk) 13:27, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
In articles such as this, when it unclear whether one is talking about a primitive organism (Archaea) or an eon of geologic time (Archaean eon) the adjective 'archaean' can be ambiguous. To mitigate this ambiguity, I have changed most instances of 'archaean' referring to the organism to 'archaeal', which I think is less ambiguous because it seems to be rarely used in connection with the eon. CharlesHBennett ( talk) — Preceding undated comment added 11:16, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
The article contradicts itself on the issue of introns in Archea. The table comparing domains says that Archaea and Prokaryotes have no introns. The Genetics section says Archaea have introns in some genes. I believe the latter is correct but I don't have a reference. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jason.Rafe.Miller ( talk • contribs) 00:04, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
I'm no life scientist, but wouldn't "Halobacteria" be in the bacteria domain intend of Archaea? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.67.173.198 ( talk) 01:31, 18 October 2014 (UTC)