Archaea as a Group of Single-Celled Microorganisms Essay - 2

Archaea as a Group of Single-Celled Microorganisms - Essay Example Methanogens produce methane and thermophile Archaea thrive in environments with very high temperatures. Throughout the essay, an extensive overview of the reasons as to why the Archaea have been classified as Prokaryotes will give. In addition, the essay covers the evolution of the Archaea and relation to Eukaryotes and Bacteria. Lastly, the discussion will elaborate on the reasons why Archaea are classified as extremophiles. Gottschalk G. (2012). Archaea and bacteria have a similarity in the cell structure. To be exact, Archaea have shown no difference with the Gram-positive bacteria in terms of cell structure. This could be the reason as to why Archaea is under the prokaryotic domain because is held together by a single unit of a lipid membrane with a very heavy layer sacculus. Through the diagrams above, the similarities in the cell structure of the Archaea and Bacteria can be seen. A further link through research has shown that some Archaea species like Viz Thermoplasma contain staining of the Gram-positive bacteria species, for instance, Viz mycoplasma. Just like most prokaryotes, Archaea has a small cellular size because it lacks the nucleus (Koonin et al., 1997). This makes their locomotion very swift because it can take up the shape of an object. It can also change its form depending on the surrounding to avoid harm. In research findings, it has been established that about 65% of the genes in a species of Archaea M.janaschii are found in most of the bacteria with only 7% being in Eukarya. Even though Archaea shows uniqueness in its gene composition, the same is a trend is evident in most prokaryotic genomes. Basing the argument using the prokaryotic homolog only, then the phylogenetic tree can actually prove that there is a very close relationship between Archaea and Gram-positive bacteria. This, however, shows that the Gram-negative bacteria have little similarities with the Archea. Signature sequences in the diversity of the protein structure have been used to show the unique relationship between the Gram-positive bacteria and the Archaea.