archaea
plural noun
ar·chaea
| \ är-ˈkē-ə
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Definition of archaea
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Other Words from archaea
archaeal
\ -əl
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adjective
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adjective
archaean
\ -ən
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adjective or noun
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adjective or noun
Examples of archaea in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Most of the lifeforms discovered are bacteria and other single-cell microorganisms, such as archaea, but their sheer mass equals roughly 15 to 23 billion tonnes of carbon—more than humanity's total imprint on the surface. — Sam Blum, Popular Mechanics, "Vast Ecosystem of Underground Organisms Holds More Life Than Earth's Oceans," 11 Dec. 2018 Bacteria were more prevalent than eukaryotes and archaea, although this finding could be biased by the relative lack of eukaryotic sequences in public databases. — Diana Gitig, Ars Technica, "Ahh, summer—ramlibacter season," 14 Nov. 2018 After several years of analyzing the samples, Thomas’s team found archaea buried within the sediment. — Shannon Hall, Scientific American, "The Not So Dead Sea: Traces of Ancient Bacteria Found in the Lake’s Sediments," 5 June 2019 Specialized tools were designed to collect samples by inserting a brass cylinder into a cow’s mouth and pulling fluid from the rumen where the scientists could see a pool of protozoa, fungi, bacteria, archaea, and DNA crucial to the experiment. — National Geographic, "Can methane burps be bred out of cows?," 3 July 2019 As the evolutionary story is usually told, first came the prokaryotes: the archaea and bacteria, which are often envisioned as simple bags of enzymes without an intricate structure. — Quanta Magazine, "Bacterial Complexity Revises Ideas About ‘Which Came First?’," 16 June 2019 The first such advance was the identification of archaea. — David P. Barash, WSJ, "‘The Tangled Tree’ Review: From Tiny Seeds," 9 Aug. 2018 Bacteria form one domain; their close relatives, archaea, form another. — Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, "Scientists Discover a Whole New Kingdom of Life," 19 Nov. 2018 Billions of years ago the single-celled common ancestor of all life on earth split into bacteria and archaea, according to evolutionary theory. — Prachi Patel, Scientific American, "Engineered Microbe Shakes Up the Tree of Life," 13 July 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'archaea.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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More Definitions for archaea
archaea
noun plural
ar·chaea
| \ är-ˈkē-ə
\
\
Medical Definition of archaea
1
capitalized
: a domain of primitive single-celled prokaryotic microorganisms including methane-producing forms and others that thrive in extremely salty or hot, often acidic environments
They are largely Archaea, a domain of life first identified 20 years ago …— Charles W. Petit and Laura Tangley, U.S. News & World Report, 8 Nov. 1999
2
: microorganisms of the domain Archaea
Many of the archaea are thermophilic.— David W. Wolfe, Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2001
Other Words from archaea
archaeal
\ är-ˈkē-əl
\
adjective
\
adjective
Despite the morphological resemblance of archaea to bacterial cells (e.g., lack of a nuclear membrane), many archaeal processes, such as transcription, are much more similar to those of eukaryotes.
— Ken F. Jarrell, Bioscience, 1 July 1999