Heat-loving archaea carry the sulfur RNA backbone chemistry used in drugs, a Cell paper reports

Growing the strains under fixed conditions is the right design for the environment claim, because a modification level can be tied to a setting only if the experimenter fixed that setting ^[4].

Grohmann framed the result as a matter of priority and function. "Archaea had already developed this chemical form of RNA stabilization before we made it usable for medical applications in the age of RNA therapeutics," she said ^[6]. The paper's title supports the first part: it reports natural RNA phosphorothioates and their writer machinery ^[1]. The function is less settled. In drugs, the sulfur protects against nucleases ^[5]. For the archaea, the summary says only that the work opens new perspectives on RNA stability under extreme conditions ^[9].

Modification that tracks conditions is a correlation until the writer is removed and the RNA's fate is measured. That test would show whether the sulfur is what keeps archaeal RNA intact in the heat. The phys.org summary does not say whether the paper runs it, why the levels move, how many species or modified sites were counted, or which enzymes are involved.

In our view, the near-term yield is a better account of how archaeal RNA copes with heat, if the stability link holds. Therapeutic use is a step further. According to the summary, the researchers say the findings could be useful in biotechnology for developing RNA-based therapeutics ^[10].