How to Use archaea in a Sentence

archaea

plural noun
  • If the archaea are in there, more nitrite will start to appear.
    — Melina Walling, The Arizona Republic, 3 Oct. 2022
  • Called archaea, the microbes may be the ancestral link between complex and single-celled life.
    — Danielle Hall, Smithsonian, 20 Apr. 2010
  • But by 2015, the researchers had isolated an intriguing new species of archaea.
    — Carl Zimmer, New York Times, 15 Jan. 2020
  • Unlike bacteria and archaea, which are much older forms of life called prokaryotes, a eukaryotic cell has a double membrane of lipids around it.
    — Veronique Greenwood, Quanta Magazine, 8 Sep. 2025
  • Bacteria form one domain; their close relatives, archaea, form another.
    — Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, 19 Nov. 2018
  • Some of the most important genes that shaped the evolution of the early eukaryotes have changed so much that they can’t be ascribed to either archaea or bacteria.
    — Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 13 Sep. 2010
  • The remainder is distributed among fungi, archaea, protists, animals and viruses, in that order.
    — The Economist, 24 May 2018
  • Pyroaerobiology, a new field of science with a badass name, seeks to understand how colonies of bacteria, fungi, archaea, and viruses are swept up in smoke.
    — Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 20 Dec. 2019
  • After several years of analyzing the samples, Thomas’s team found archaea buried within the sediment.
    — Shannon Hall, Scientific American, 5 June 2019
  • The point of contention is over tiny trace amounts of DNA found in the pool that belong to a category of life called archaea, or archaebacteria.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 15 Nov. 2019
  • The evidence of life found in Ethiopia is DNA from archaea, an organism similar to bacteria.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 15 Nov. 2019
  • In some ponds, microbes known as archaea thrived, the researchers report today in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
    — Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 28 Oct. 2019
  • 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, 14 Nov. 2018
  • Moreover, Schleper said, the methods used to survey microbial diversity aren’t well suited to detecting archaea in general.
    — Quanta Magazine, 29 Oct. 2015
  • Collectively, this consortium of bacteria, archaea, fungi and viruses are called our microbiota.
    — Michelle Sconce Massaquoi, The Conversation, 3 Mar. 2020
  • Asgard archaea represent the earliest contribution, as would be expected.
    — ArsTechnica, 11 June 2026
  • As expected, many of the other genes came from either the Asgard archaea or Alphaproteobacteria, consistent with the big-picture model of our origins.
    — ArsTechnica, 11 June 2026
  • Two other types of microfossils had the same carbon ratios as microbes known as archaea that depend on methane as their energy source—and that played a pivotal role in the development of multicellular life.
    — Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 18 Dec. 2017
  • Although the two microbial groups were only distantly related, the gene transfer allowed the researchers to use the cyanobacteria family tree and its fossils to more accurately date the molecular-clock data for the archaea.
    — Quanta Magazine, 24 Apr. 2018
  • Once software had assembled the short sequences of the original survey into longer fragments, the researchers checked for gene similarities to identify whether the fragment came from bacteria, complex cells, archaea, or viruses.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 13 Feb. 2020
  • 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, 11 Dec. 2018
  • The researchers’ analysis suggested that the microbe is part of the DPANN archaea, sometimes called nanoarchaea or ultra-small archaea, which are characterized by small size and small genomes.
    — Jake Buehler, Quanta Magazine, 24 Nov. 2025
  • Primary endosymbiosis gave rise to mitochondria and chloroplasts and involved primitive unicellular prokaryotes (or proto-eukaryotes) and archaea.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 June 2026
  • These organisms were either in symbiotic association with, engulfed as food by, or parasites of other prokaryotic cells, presumably Asgard archaea—a group of archaea thought to be the closest prokaryotic relative of eukaryotes.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 June 2026
  • This community of bacteria, archaea, fungi and viruses is an active metabolic partner, synthesizing compounds your own cells cannot make, regulating inflammation, shaping immune responses and even influencing mood through the gut-brain axis.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes.com, 6 June 2026
  • 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, 3 July 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'archaea.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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