As somebody who worked with Woese (the discoverer of the archaea), what is frustrating about these debates is the shifting nature what "two domains" mean. In th

As somebody who worked with Woese (the discoverer of the archaea), what is frustrating about these debates is the shifting nature what "two domains" mean. In the 1980s and 1990s, supporters of "two domains" denied that archaea were in any way special and just were just unusual bacteria not particularly connected to eukaryotes in any way despite the fact that it was clear that the basic systems of transcription and translation in archaea weren't at all like bacteria but far closer to eukaryotes. Now the supporters of the "two domains" accept that archaea were the ancestors of eukaryotes and so there are two domains for the opposite reason!