biostudies-literatureUnknown17(3)Frohn BPThe Endosomal Sorting Complex Required for Transport (ESCRT) system is a multi-protein machinery that is involved in cell division of both Eukaryotes and Archaea. This spread across domains of life suggests that a precursor ESCRT machinery existed already at an evolutionary early stage of life, making it a promising candidate for the (re)construction of a minimal cell division machinery. There are, however, only few experimental data about ESCRT machineries in Archaea, due to high technical challenges in cultivation and microscopy. Here, we analyse the proteins of ESCRT machineries in archaea bioinformatically on a protein domain level, to enable mechanistical comparison without such challenging experiments. First, we infer that there are at least three different cell division mechanisms uPloS onee0266395https://www.ebi.ac.uk/biostudies/studies/S-EPMC8970359biostudies-literatureTracing back variations in archaeal ESCRT-based cell division to protein domain architectures.PMC8970359Cox JFrohn BPSchwille PHartel TfalseTracing back variations in archaeal ESCRT-based cell division to protein domain architectures.The Endosomal Sorting Complex Required for Transport (ESCRT) system is a multi-protein machinery that is involved in cell division of both Eukaryotes and Archaea. This spread across domains of life suggests that a precursor ESCRT machinery existed already at an evolutionary early stage of life, making it a promising candidate for the (re)construction of a minimal cell division machinery. There are, however, only few experimental data about ESCRT machineries in Archaea, due to high technical challenges in cultivation and microscopy. Here, we analyse the proteins of ESCRT machineries in archaea bioinformatically on a protein domain level, to enable mechanistical comparison without such challenging experiments. First, we infer that there are at least three different cell division mechanisms u2022-01-01T00:00:00Z20222026-05-31T06:04:04.947Z2025-04-20T00:21:00.88ZS-EPMC89703593535827410.1371/journal.pone.0266395