The major archaeal membrane glycerolipids are distinguished from those of bacteria and eukaryotes by the contrasting stereochemistry of their glycerol backbones, and by the use of ether-linked isoprenoid-based alkyl chains rather than ester-linked fatty acyl chains for their hydrophobic moieties. These fascinating compounds play important roles in the extremophile lifestyles of many species, but are also present in the growing numbers of recently discovered mesophilic archaea. The past decade has witnessed significant advances in our understanding of archaea in general and their lipids in particular. Much of the new information has come from the ability to screen large microbial populations via environmental metagenomics, which has revolutionised our understanding of the extent of archaeal biodiversity that is coupled with a strict conservation of their membrane lipid compositions. Significant additional progress has come from new culturing and analytical techniques that are gradually enabling archaeal physiology and biochemistry to be studied in real time. These studies are beginning to shed light on the much-discussed and still-controversial process of eukaryogenesis, which probably involved both bacterial and archaeal progenitors. Puzzlingly, although eukaryotes retain many attributes of their putative archaeal ancestors, their lipid compositions only reflect their bacterial progenitors. Finally, elucidation of archaeal lipids and their metabolic pathways have revealed potentially interesting applications that have opened up new frontiers for biotechnological exploitation of these organisms. This review is concerned with the analysis, structure, function, evolution and biotechnology of archaeal lipids and their associated metabolic pathways.

主要的古细菌膜甘油脂与细菌和真核生物的甘油脂的区别在于其甘油主链的立体化学差异，以及其疏水部分使用醚连接的基于类异戊二烯的烷基链而不是酯连接的脂肪酰基链。这些令人着迷的化合物在许多物种的极端微生物生活方式中发挥着重要作用，但也存在于最近发现的越来越多的嗜温古菌中。过去十年见证了我们对古细菌、特别是其脂质的理解取得了重大进展。许多新信息来自通过环境宏基因组学筛选大型微生物种群的能力，这彻底改变了我们对古菌生物多样性程度的理解，以及对其膜脂成分的严格保护。新的培养和分析技术取得了重大进展，这些技术逐渐使古菌生理学和生物化学得以实时研究。这些研究开始揭示备受讨论且仍有争议的真核发生过程，该过程可能涉及细菌和古菌祖细胞。令人困惑的是，尽管真核生物保留了其假定的古菌祖先的许多属性，但它们的脂质成分仅反映了它们的细菌祖先。最后，对古菌脂质及其代谢途径的阐明揭示了潜在有趣的应用，为这些生物体的生物技术开发开辟了新领域。本综述涉及古菌脂质及其相关代谢途径的分析、结构、功能、进化和生物技术。