Odinarchaeota
Classification
Archaea; Proteoarchaeota; Asgard; Odinarchaeota; Odinarchaeia; Odinarchaeales; Odinarchaeaceae
Species
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NCBI: [1] |
Candidatus Odinarchaeota
Description and Significance
There is not much known about Odinarchaeota and what it looks like. However, it is a complex microbe like that of other Asgard archaea members. Many members of this family have complex and long protrusions. Odinarchaeaota are typically found at deep depths within the ocean, or in hot spring where temperatures are very high. However, Odinarchaeota can be found in places like freshwater, and on bodies of animals. Odinarchaeota is a part of Asgard archaea. Asgard archaea are important because signature eukaryotic proteins are derived from them. Even chloroplasts in plant cells are encoded from Asgard archaea.
Genome Structure
The genome size of Odinarchaeota is 1.4 Mb. Odinarchaeota only has 1 chromosome, and it is circular. There is very little research done about Asgard archaea, and even less research done on Odinarchaeota. Studies have found that some important eukaryotic proteins are encoded by Asgard archaea, for example some very important membrane rebuilding proteins are encoded by these microbes.
Cell Structure, Metabolism and Life Cycle
Odinarchaeota are anaerobic meaning this organism can only live in the absence of oxygen. Asgard archaea appear to also be very active in nitrogen cycling. Odinarchaeota does not encode for a complete butanoyl-CoA oxidation pathway but is still capable of degrading peptides. Since this microbe is capable of degrading peptides, this tells researchers that Odinarchaeota has a heterotrophic lifestyle.
Ecology and Pathogenesis
Odinarchaeota are found all over the world, in different geographical regions and habitats. Odinarchaeota is typically found in sediments with high salinity and at great depths. But some Odinarchaeota can be found on the body of some animals, in freshwater, on the sea surface, and even in certain plants. Odinarchaeota is very significant because researchers believe a merger of Asgard archaea, and an aerobic bacterium created the eukaryotes with aerobic mitochondria. It is also believed that a second merger is what created the chloroplasts in plant cells. Using metagenomics researchers have found that several viruses are associated with Asgard archaea. Viruses associated with Asgard archaea were assigned to specific hosts using CRISPR sequencing, this is how Odinarchaeia was discovered.
References
Biology:Asgard (archaea) - HandWiki. (2023, June 28). Handwiki.org. https://handwiki.org/wiki/Biology:Asgard_(archaea)
L. Eme et al. Inference and reconstruction of the heimdallarchaeial ancestry of eukaryotes. Nature, published online June 14, 2023; doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06186-2
MacLeod F, Kindler GS, Wong HL, Chen R, Burns BP. Asgard archaea: Diversity, function, and evolutionary implications in a range of microbiomes. AIMS Microbiol. 2019 Jan 30;5(1):48-61. doi: 10.3934/microbiol.2019.1.48. PMID: 31384702; PMCID: PMC6646929.
Schoch CL, et al. NCBI Taxonomy: a comprehensive update on curation, resources and tools. Database (Oxford). 2020: baaa062. PubMed: 32761142 PMC: PMC7408187.
Sofia Medvedeva, Jiarui Sun, Natalya Yutin, Eugene V. Koonin, Takuro Nunoura, et al.. Three families of Asgard archaeal viruses identified in metagenome-assembled genomes. Nature Microbiology, 2022, 7 (7), pp.962-973. ⟨10.1038/s41564-022-01144-6⟩. ⟨pasteur-03711350⟩
Author
Page authored by Lilly Branch, student of Prof. Bradley Tolar at UNC Wilmington.
