John Carlos Baez on Nostr: I would go into biology if I could write a paper with a title like "Dynamic ...
I would go into biology if I could write a paper with a title like "Dynamic instability of Asgard archaeal tubulins". It sounds so cool.
Asgard is the dwelling of the gods in Norse mythology.
Archaea are an important group of organisms, going back to the early Earth.
The Asgard archaea are a "kingdom" belonging to the "domain" Archaea, which may have spawned the eukaryotes - organisms like plants and animals and fungi.
Tubulins are proteins that help hold cells together.
This paper argues that tubulins in the Asgard archaea are somewhat unstable and can naturally change to tubulins more like those in plants and animals. This is more evidence that eukaryotes came from Archaea. If this is true, we may eventually stop saying there's a separate domain called Eukarya. There will just be two: Archaea and Bacteria.
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.aeh1082Published at
2026-07-25 16:38:14 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "I would go into biology if I could write a paper with a title like \"Dynamic instability of Asgard archaeal tubulins\". It sounds so cool.\n\nAsgard is the dwelling of the gods in Norse mythology. \n\nArchaea are an important group of organisms, going back to the early Earth.\n\nThe Asgard archaea are a \"kingdom\" belonging to the \"domain\" Archaea, which may have spawned the eukaryotes - organisms like plants and animals and fungi.\n\nTubulins are proteins that help hold cells together.\n\nThis paper argues that tubulins in the Asgard archaea are somewhat unstable and can naturally change to tubulins more like those in plants and animals. This is more evidence that eukaryotes came from Archaea. If this is true, we may eventually stop saying there's a separate domain called Eukarya. There will just be two: Archaea and Bacteria.\n\nhttps://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.aeh1082",
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