Asgard archaea from sediments

This study aims at expanding the known diversity of archaea closely related to Lokiarchaeum. We propose a new super-phylum of Asgards comprising fours diverse candidate phyla, namely Candidatus: Heimdallarchaeota, Odinarchaeota, Thorarchaeota and Lokiarchaeota, the last one discovered before. Their evolutionary significance comes from the close phylogenetic relationship with eukaryotes and genomic bins containing a diversity of eukaryotic signature proteins.