New Discovery Sheds Light On The Origins Of Complex Life

The new study details the discovery of a new group of archaea, the Asgard archaea, which provide insight on how eukaryotes evolved. Asgard archaea microbes fall into one of four known lineages, named after Norse gods. They’re typically found in environments such as the sea floor, river sediments, lakes and hot springs. What’s unusual about Asgard archaea is that while they are prokaryotes, just like bacteria and archaea, they have several eukaryotic genes in their genome, which suggests we may have evolved from these microbes.