This result is a culmination of several years of painstaking lab work in cultivation of an extremely sensitive microorganism, combined with advanced cryo-electron microscopy imaging methods. It has previously been suggested, based on genome analysis, that archaea from the [Asgard group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asgard_(archaea)) are close evolutionary predecessors of eukaryotes (and hence of all complex multicellular life), but this seems to be the first evidence based on direct observation of cell structure.
vtj OP t1_j1esl1x wrote
Reply to A complex cytoskeleton, previously only observed in eukaryotic cells, is now found in a new species of archaea from the Asgard group, supporting the theory that eukaryotes evolved from Asgard archaea by vtj
This result is a culmination of several years of painstaking lab work in cultivation of an extremely sensitive microorganism, combined with advanced cryo-electron microscopy imaging methods. It has previously been suggested, based on genome analysis, that archaea from the [Asgard group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asgard_(archaea)) are close evolutionary predecessors of eukaryotes (and hence of all complex multicellular life), but this seems to be the first evidence based on direct observation of cell structure.
Here is the original paper.