Response to Jarrell and Albers: seven letters less does not say more

Abstract

Jarrell and Albers [1] argue that motility structures called flagella should be renamed as archaella in one of the three domains of life, namely the Archaea. In their text the authors present an excellent comparison of flagella from the two domains Bacteria and Archaea (the third domain, Eukarya, is covered less completely). The new name archaellum, however, does not give any new information on the motility structure itself. I argue that the substitution of the phrase 'archaeal flagellum' by 'archaellum' does not lead to more clarity, but will lead to confusion: seven letters less does not say more!