Structure and function of ATP synthase in aerobic archaea

Abstract

Ever since Archaea were discovered, their ability to thrive in extreme environments has attracted much attention. Over the years, archaea have gone from microbial extremophilic oddities to organisms of universal importance and have been used to elucidate fundamental biological questions. The phylogeny of the Archaea domain is in constant evolution; to this day it is composed by five main branches: Crenarchaeota, Euryarchaeota, Thaumarchaeota, Korarchaeota and Nanoarchaeota. In the present study, we list the main structural features of the respiratory complexes of the most studied genera of aerobic archaea. We present a morphological comparison of the ATP synthase of these organisms with the rest of the family of rotary ATPases (F- and V-ATPases) as well as a topological analysis of this enzymatic complex (A1Ao-ATP synthase) based on the function of each of the subunits that comprise it.