Genetic technologies for extremely thermophilic microorganisms of Sulfolobus, the only genetically tractable genus of crenarchaea

Archaea represents the third domain of life, with the information-processing machineries more closely resembling those of eukaryotes than the machineries of the bacterial counterparts but sharing metabolic pathways with organisms of Bacteria, the sister prokaryotic phylum. Archaeal organisms also possess unique features as revealed by genomics and genome comparisons and by biochemical characterization of prominent enzymes. Nevertheless, diverse...