New insights into ancient life: Chromosome segregation in Archaea
(PhysOrg.com) -- The effort to classify life into various groups has been a bumpy ride. Prior to the 1900s, living things were usually pegged as either plants or animals – period. By the middle of the 20th century, however, it was asserted that this scheme did not adequately represent fungi, bacteria and protists, leading to a five-group classification – Monera (bacteria), Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia. At roughly the same time, however, a fundamental distinction between prokaryotic bacteria and the four eukaryotic kingdoms (plants, animals, fungi, and protists) based on nuclei, cytoskeleton, internal membranes, and other shared eukaryote characteristics – for example, unlike eukaryotes, their genetic material is not wrapped by a membrane into a separate compartment – was acknowledged, resulting in a different system – and considerable confusion. Then, things changed anew when an entirely new prokaryotic group – the so-called third domain of life, living in high temperatures...