Extremophiles: Sustainable Resources and Biotechnological Implications
Language: English
Pages: 456
ISBN: 1118103009
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Explores the utility and potential of extremophiles in sustainability and biotechnology
Many extremophilic bio-products are already used as life-saving drugs. Until recently, however, the difficulty of working with these microbes has discouraged efforts to develop extremophilic microbes as potential drug reservoirs of the future. Recent technological advances have opened the door to exploring these organisms anew as sources of products that might prove useful in clinical and environmental biotechnology and drug development.
Extremophiles features outstanding articles by expert scientists who shed light on broad-ranging areas of progress in the development of smart therapeutics for multiple disease types and products for industrial use. It bridges technological gaps, focusing on critical aspects of extremolytes and the mechanisms regulating their biosynthesis that are relevant to human health and bioenergy, including value-added products of commercial significance as well as other potentially viable products.
This groundbreaking guide:
- Introduces the variety of extremophiles and their extremolytes including extremozymes
- Provides an overview of the methodologies used to acquire extremophiles
- Reviews the literature on the diversity of extremophiles
- Offers tools and criteria for data interpretation of various extremolytes/extremozymes
- Discusses experimental design problems associated with extremophiles and their therapeutic implications
- Explores the challenges and possibilities of developing extremolytes for commercial purposes
- Explains the FDA's regulations on certain microbial bio-products that will be of interest to potential industrialists
Extremophiles is an immensely useful resource for graduate students and researchers in biotechnology, clinical biotechnology, microbiology, and applied microbiology.
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1.4.2. Cellular Organization Halophiles need to survive in environments of high salt concentration; hence, they maintain cellular osmotic pressure by controlling the amount of salt inside a cell. First, they possess Na + /H + antiporters to maintain a low sodium ion concentration (Oren, 1999; Zou et al., 2008). The Halobacteriales, including fermentative or homoacetogenic anaerobes, accumulate K + and Na + ions to maintain osmotic balance. Second, enhanced levels of glycerol, amino acids,
BIOTECHNOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS OF COLD-ADAPTED BACTERIA cleanup facilitated. As an example, the genus Shewanella has been widely studied because of its several biotechnological uses, such as bioremediation of chlorinated compounds, radionuclides, and other environmental pollutants. More than 50 strains of this genus have been isolated from various cold environments all around the world (www.bacterio.cict.fr). Phylogenetic relationships based on 16S rRNA gene sequences are represented in Figure
developing extraterrestrial decontamination protocols. Icarus 174:572–584. Ciaramella, M., Napoli, A., Rossi, M. 2005. Another extreme genome: how to live at pH 0. Trends in Microbiology 13:49–51. Cruickshank, R., Duguid, J.P., Swain, R.H.A. 1965. Medical Microbiology, 11th ed. London: Livingstone. D’Amico, S., Collins, T., Marx, J.-C., Feller, G., Gerday, C. 2006. Psychrophilic microorganisms: challenges for life. EMBO Reports 7:385–389. Davies, P. 1999. The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the
known as Haloquadratum walsbyi was not recognized until 1980. Walsby (1980) observed these unusually shaped organisms in a brine pool on the Sinai Peninsula (Egypt) and recognized their prokaryote nature because of the presence of gas vesicles. Subsequently, it was realized that these flat square cells are the most abundant type of prokaryotes in the brines of many saltern crystallizer ponds. When culture-independent 16S rRNA sequence-based techniques of environmental genomics were first applied
phosholipid bilayer contribute to their thermoadaptation (van de Vossenberg et al., 1995; Mathai et al., 2001; Futterer et al., 2004). A few extreme thermophiles such as Pyrobolus and Thermoplasma acidophilum use a modified lipid that forms a monolayer instead of a bilayer, thus making it immune to the tendency of high temperature to pull bilayers apart. In thermophiles growing above 60◦ C, modifications are also observed in the metabolic pathways. Synthesis of heme, acetyl-CoA, acyl-CoA, and
