Small archaea may form intimate partnerships to maximize their metabolic potential

DPANN archaea have characteristically small cells and unique genomes that were long overlooked in diversity surveys. Their reduced genomes often lack essential metabolic pathways, requiring symbiotic relationships with other archaeal and bacterial hosts for survival. Yet a long-standing question remains, what is the advantage of maintaining ultrasmall cells. A recent study by Zhang et al. examined genomes of DPANN archaea from marine oxygen deficient zones (ODZs) (I. H. Zhang, B. Borer, R. Zhao, S. Wilbert, et al., mBio 15:e02918-23, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.02918-23). Surprisingly, these genomes contain a broad array of metabolic pathways including genes predicted to be involved in nitrous oxide (N₂O) reduction. However, N₂O levels are likely too low in ODZs to make this metabolically feasible. Modeling co-localization of DPANN archaea (N₂O consumers) with other larger cells (N₂O producers) demonstrates that N₂O uptake rates can be optimized by maximizing the producer-to-consumer size ratio and proximity of consumer cells to producers. This may explain why such a diversity of archaea maintain extremely small cell sizes.