thumb|Molecular structures of iGDGTs containing 0 to 4 cyclopentane rings (GDGT-0 to GDGT-4). Caldarchaeol is a membrane-spanning lipid of the isoprenoid glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (iGDGT) class, produced and used by archaea. Membranes made up of caldarchaeol are more stable since the hydrophobic chains are linked together (as compared to lipid bilayer structures in eukaryotes and bacteria), allowing archaea to withstand extreme conditions.
thumb|Molecular structures of iGDGTs containing 0 to 4 cyclopentane rings (GDGT-0 to GDGT-4). Caldarchaeol is a membrane-spanning lipid of the isoprenoid glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (iGDGT) class, produced and used by archaea. Membranes made up of caldarchaeol are more stable since the hydrophobic chains are linked together (as compared to lipid bilayer structures in eukaryotes and bacteria), allowing archaea to withstand extreme conditions.
== Chemical Structure == Caldarchaeol is also known as dibiphytanyl diglycerol tetraether, or GDGT-0. Two glycerol units are linked together by two biphytanes, each of which consist of two phytanes linked together to form a linear chain of 32 carbon atoms (40 carbons including methyl branches).
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).