Archaea—a primary domain of life besides Bacteria—have for a long time been regarded as peculiar organisms that play marginal roles in biogeochemical cycles. However, this picture changed with the discovery of a large diversity of archaea in non-extreme environments enabled by the use of cultivation-independent methods. These approaches have allowed the reconstruction of genomes of uncultivated microorganisms and revealed that archaea are diverse and broadly distributed in the biosphere and seemingly include a large diversity of putative symbiotic organisms, most of which belong to the tentative archaeal superphylum referred to as DPANN. This archaeal group encompasses at least 10 different lineages and includes organisms with extremely small cell and genome sizes and limited metabolic capabilities. Therefore, many members of DPANN may be obligately dependent on symbiotic interactions with other organisms and may even include novel parasites. In this contribution, we review the current knowledge of the gene repertoires and lifestyles of members of this group and discuss their placement in the tree of life, which is the basis for our understanding of the deep microbial roots and the role of symbiosis in the evolution of life on Earth.

The recently discovered DPANN archaea are a potentially deep-branching, monophyletic radiation of organisms with small cells and genomes. However, the monophyly and early emergence of the various DPANN clades and their role in life's evolution are debated. Here, we reconstructed and analysed genomes of an uncharacterized archaeal phylum (Candidatus Undinarchaeota), revealing that its members have small genomes and, while potentially being able to conserve energy through fermentation, likely depend on partner organisms for the acquisition of certain metabolites. Our phylogenomic analyses robustly place Undinarchaeota as an independent lineage between two highly supported 'DPANN' clans. Further, our analyses suggest that DPANN have exchanged core genes with their hosts, adding to the difficulty of placing DPANN in the tree of life. This pattern can be sufficiently dominant to allow identifying known symbiont-host clades based on routes of gene transfer. Together, our work provides insights into the origins and evolution of DPANN and their hosts.

Ferritin is a highly-conserved iron-storage protein that has also been identified as an acute phase protein within the innate immune system. The iron-storage function is mediated through complementary roles played by heavy (H)-chain subunit as well as the light (L) in mammals or middle (M)-chain in teleosts, respectively. In this study, we report the identification of five ferritin subunits (H1, H2, M1, M2, M3) in the Atlantic salmon that were supported by the presence of iron-regulatory regions, gene structure, conserved domains and phylogenetic analysis. Tissue distribution analysis across eight different tissues showed that each of these isoforms is differentially expressed. We also examined the expression of the ferritin isoforms in the liver and kidney of juvenile Atlantic salmon that was challenged with Aeromonas salmonicida as well as in muscle cell culture stimulated with interleukin-1β. We found that each isoform displayed unique expression profiles, and in certain conditions the expressions between the isoforms were completely diametrical to each other. Our study is the first report of multiple ferritin isoforms from both the H- and M-chains in a vertebrate species, as well as ferritin isoforms that showed decreased expression in response to infection. Taken together, the results of our study suggest the possibility of functional differences between the H- and M-chain isoforms in terms of tissue localisation, transcriptional response to bacterial exposure and stimulation by specific immune factors.