Prof. Dr. Dina Grohmann
University of Regensburg

For several decades, humankind has been engaged in the pursuit of exploring space with the objective of answering the question of whether there is life outside our planet. A few years after man set foot on the moon, however, it turned out that previously unknown and unexplored creatures could also be found on our home planet. This group of microscopically small and long undiscovered single-celled organisms is called 'archaea', which, among other things, colonize the most inhospitable places on our planet. Archaea are considered to be "ancient" organisms, yet they are also closely related to eukaryotic cells. Hence, they possess significant potential to enhance our comprehension of the evolution of complex life on Earth. In this presentation, I will take the audience on an exploration of the intriguing realm of extremophilic archaea, and the diversity of cellular organisation encountered in the archaeal domain of life, addressing compelling questions such as the smallest possible size of a living cell. I will also present recent work that focuses on how Archaea-specific RNA modifications support life above the boiling point of water and how these modifications are dynamically installed and removed. Secondly, I present a unique archaeal cell division mechanism encountered in an organism with a complex membrane architecture.