
The trickster microbes that are shaking up the tree of life - sohkamyung
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01496-w
======
jhbadger
As somebody who worked with Woese (the discoverer of the archaea), what is
frustrating about these debates is the shifting nature what "two domains"
mean. In the 1980s and 1990s, supporters of "two domains" denied that archaea
were in any way special and just were just unusual bacteria not particularly
connected to eukaryotes in any way despite the fact that it was clear that the
basic systems of transcription and translation in archaea weren't at all like
bacteria but far closer to eukaryotes.

Now the supporters of the "two domains" accept that archaea were the ancestors
of eukaryotes and so there are two domains for the opposite reason!

