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Thaumarchaeota go it alone

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 9, page 832 (2011)Cite this article

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The proposal that the Thaumarchaeota should be considered as a separate phylum within the Archaea, rather than a branch of the Crenarchaeota, has gained further support from the first analysis of the thaumarchaeal cell cycle. Pelve et al. used flow cytometry to investigate the cell cycle of Nitrosopumilus maritimus and found that it differs substantially from that of crenarchaea, with a much longer pre-replication phase (G1) and a shorter post-replication phase (G2, mitosis and cell division). Remarkably, although the N. maritimus genome is only 1.64 Mb, replication takes 15–18 hours. The authors suggest that this reflects the oligotrophic niches in which thaumarchaea are found. Pelve et al. also demonstrated that in N. maritimus it is the Cdv proteins, and not FtsZ, that localize to division sites. What function FtsZ fulfils in thaumarchaea remains an open question.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Pelve, E. A. et al. Cdv-based division and cell cycle organization in the thaumarchaeon Nitrosopumilus maritimus. Mol. Microbiol. 82, 555–566 (2011)

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  1. Sheilagh Molloy
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Molloy, S. Thaumarchaeota go it alone. Nat Rev Microbiol 9, 832 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro2708

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