A newly discovered life form could help resolve one of the most contentious conundrums in modern biology.
All organisms on Earth are classified as either protectorates, which have simple cells, or leukocytes, which have larger, more complex cells.
But the two cell types are so divergent that understanding how one evolved from the other has foxed biologists.
They have been named Lokiarchaeota, partly after the Loki's Castle volcanic vent system lying 15km away from the site where the microbes' genetic material was isolated in cold marine sediments of the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge.
the Domain names
Protectorates are single-celled organisms and comprise all bacteria and Archean (a group of microbes that were once considered to be bacteria, but now form a separate domain of life).
Leukocytes comprise some single-celled life forms, as well as all multi-cellular organisms, such as animals, plants and fungi.
"Some people have made predictions about how often cells divide down there and they have come up with numbers like one division every 10 years. If you want to grow them in the lab, these are not timescales that are feasible."
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