While the new evidence/discovery itself can be quickly summarized:
>Within the now-dominant two-domain picture to which the Asgard archaea are contributing, the big story of life on this planet goes something like this. Some 4 billion years ago, life forked into two single-celled branches, the archaea and the bacteria.
Genetic evidence implies that the two branches crossed again 2 billion years later when an archaeon — likely from the Asgard group — somehow ingested a bacterium. The process domesticated what was once a distinct, free-living cell and turned it into the organelles called mitochondria that persist inside eukaryotic cells. The descendants of that fateful union branched into other single-celled organisms like dinoflagellates, and then later into multicellular creatures that grew to macroscopic sizes, left fossils behind, and colonized both sea and land.
What stands out for me the most throughout the article, however, is the hostile environment and over-competitiveness "slowing down" the already painstakingly slow research itself (acknowledged by all parties):
>Now a high-stakes, slow-motion race is on as labs around the world attempt to grow their own Asgard cultures. Samples aren’t shared; growth strategies are tightly guarded secrets. “We were honestly shocked” when the Schleper team’s results came out, wrote Hiroyuki Imachi, the microbiologist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology who, after a grueling 12-year effort, isolated the first and currently only other Asgard archaea sample.
>Meanwhile, in Schleper’s lab in Austria, the initial six-year grant was dwindling and no new funding was in sight. One postdoc assigned to the task of growing the organism had ended up leaving science. Another team member, a technician, had pipetted so much they needed surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome.
>Still, labs around the world are gambling that bringing more diverse representatives of the Asgard group into cultivation will yield a bonanza of new clues about their — and our — common ancestor. Schleper is trying. So is Ettema. So is Baum, who said his lab is soon welcoming a new colleague who will bring vials of archaea from groups like Heimdall and Odin. So is Imachi, who declined to speak to Quanta for this story.
“If I were to be interviewed by you now, I would most likely talk about new data that has not yet been published,” he explained in an email, adding that his group applauded the Schleper team’s efforts. “It is very competitive now (although I do not like this kind of competition),” he added.
Other sources also bemoaned the overly pressurized atmosphere. “It would be nice if the field would be more open to sharing,” Spang said. The pressure weighs heaviest on the young scientists who tend to take on the high-risk, high-reward cultivation projects. Success can add a glowing Nature paper to their resume. But wasting years on a failed effort can stunt their chances of ever getting a job in science. “It’s really an unfair situation,” Schleper said.