Asgardarchaeota

Citation

Formal styling

Asgardarchaeota Tamarit et al., 2024

Effective publication

Tamarit et al., 2024

SeqCode status

Valid (SeqCode)

Register List

seqco.de/r:xmz83je1 (validated)

Canonical URL

https://seqco.de/i:33331

Nomenclature

Rank

Phylum

Inferred stem

Asgardarchae-

Syllabication

As.gar.dar.chae.o'ta

Etymology

N.L. neut. n. Asgardarchaeum, referring to the type genus Asgardarchaeum; -ota, ending to denote a phylum; N.L. neut. pl. n. Asgardarchaeota, the Asgardarchaeum phylum

Nomenclatural type

Asgardarchaeum

Nomenclatural status

Validly published under the SeqCode

Taxonomy

Description

Asgardarchaeota, commonly referred to as Asgard archaea, are a candidatus phylum-level archaeal clade that includes the closest archaeal relatives of eukaryotes. Metagenomic discovery of new microbial life continues to expand our understanding of the diversity and evolutionary history of life on Earth. The Asgard archaea have garnered significant attention due to their close relatedness to the nucleocytoplasmic lineage of eukaryotes, offering invaluable insights into eukaryogenesis, i.e., the evolutionary transition from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cellular life (Zaremba-Niedzwiedzka et al., 2017; Williams et al., 2020; Eme et al., 2023; Vosseberg et al., 2024). Discovered first with environmental 16S rRNA sequencing in 1999 (Vetriani et al., 1999), the group was named Marine Benthic Group B (MBG-B) and later referred to as Deep-Sea Archaeal Group (DSAG) (Inagaki et al., 2003). The first draft genome was obtained 16 years later when a metagenomics survey recovered a metagenome assembled genome (MAG) from marine sediments sampled from the Arctic Ocean, next to a hydrothermal system named Loki’s Castle (Spang et al., 2015), prompting the candidate name Lokiarchaeum as its first genus and Lokiarchaeota for its associated candidate phylum. Soon after, genomes of close relatives of Lokiarchaeum were obtained from multiple environments around the world, founding the candidate phyla Thorarchaeota (Seitz et al., 2016), Heimdallarchaeota and Odinarchaeota (Zaremba-Niedzwiedzka et al., 2017). These lineages formed a monophyletic group tentatively described as a superphylum, receiving the name Asgard archaea (Zaremba-Niedzwiedzka et al., 2017). More recently, efforts to align genome diversity within standardized taxonomic ranks (Rinke et al., 2021) led to a reclassification of the Asgard archaea as the phylum Asgardarchaeota and its constituent subgroups as classes.

Classification

Archaea » Asgardarchaeota

Parent

Archaea gtdb assigned in Da Cunha et al., 2017

Children (14)

• Asgardarchaeia
• Atabeyarchaeia
• “Baldrarchaeia” gtdb
• Freyarchaeia
• “Heimdallarchaeia” gtdb
• “Hermodarchaeia” gtdb
• “Jordiarchaeia” gtdb
• “Lokiarchaeia” gtdb
• “Lokiarchaeota”
• “Njordarchaeia” gtdb
• “Odinarchaeia” gtdb
• Promethearchaeia
• “Ranarchaeia”
• “Thorarchaeia” gtdb

Alternatively placed children (2)

• “Sifarchaeia” gtdb (preferred placement in “Sifarchaeota”)
• “Wukongarchaeia” gtdb (preferred placement in “Wukongarchaeota”)

Pseudonyms

• Asgard archaea (Colloquial or common name)

Metadata

Outside links and data sources

• GTDB Tree: p__Asgardarchaeota
• Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
• Wikispecies: Asgardarchaeota (see reference source)

Search sequences

• Seach in NCBI Nucleotide

Local history

• This name was last modified 2 months ago
• Submission process status
• Quality checks before valid publication

Registered by

Appler, Kathryn 3 months ago

Submitted by

Appler, Kathryn 3 months ago

Curators

• Palmer, Marike (nomenclature)
• Rodriguez-R, Luis M (genomics)

Validated by

Rodriguez-R, Luis M 2 months ago

Date of priority

2024-06-21 06:08 PM (UTC)