Title: Making the Case Against Archaea | Scienceline
Headings: Making the Case Against Archaea
Making the Case Against Archaea
Disease hunters target an ancient form of life.
Robert Goodier • January 2, 2009
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Robert Goodier
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Content: in the soil, the water, anywhere the rest of life can exist and even where it can’t. That’s when the chin-scratching began. Many bacteria and eukarya are well known pathogens – if you can name the infection, one of them is probably responsible. Yet archaea seemed innocent. Maybe they are, which prompts speculation that they could hold a genetic key to curing disease. Or maybe they have been causing disease all along right under our noses. “There is no inherent reason why archaea should not be involved in diseases. There is no fundamental biological or ecological barrier,” said Torsten Thomas, a microbiologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. “ It has been talked about in the scientific community for many years but nobody has really studied the reasons for the existence or nonexistence of pathogenic archaea.” Thomas thinks that should change.