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Lokiarchaeota, or Loki for short, is a variety of complex microbes discovered between Greenland and Norway. Being called missing link organisms, they fall in between the simple cell organisms and the multi-cell organisms that started around 2 billion years ago.

http://news.yahoo.com/deep-sea-micr...cellular-life-203400429.html?.gg_forward=true

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean between Greenland and Norway, scientists have found microorganisms they call a missing link connecting the simple cells that first populated Earth to the complex cellular life that emerged roughly 2 billion years ago.

The researchers said on Wednesday a group of microorganisms called Lokiarchaeota, or Loki for short, were retrieved from the inhospitable, frigid seabed about 1.5 miles (2.35 km) under the ocean surface not too far from a hydrothermal vent system called Loki's Castle, named after a Norse mythological figure.

The Lokiarchaeota are part of a group called Archaea that have relatively simple cells lacking internal structures such as a nucleus. But the researchers found the Lokiarchaeota share with eukaryotes a significant number of genes, many with functions related to the cell membrane.

These genes would have provided Lokiarchaeota "with a 'starter-kit' to support the development of cellular complexity," said evolutionary microbiologist Lionel Guy of Sweden's Uppsala University.

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