21 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
Pabulo Henrique Rampelotto
Over the last decades, scientists have been intrigued by the fascinating organisms that inhabit extreme environments. Such organisms, known as extremophiles, thrive in habitats which for other terrestrial life-forms are intolerably hostile or even lethal. They thrive in extreme hot niches, ice, and salt solutions, as…
Authors not listed
Extremophiles, organisms thriving in extreme environments – from scorching hydrothermal vents to acidic lakes and polar ice – challenge our understanding of how life thrives and adapts. These organisms exhibit remarkable diversity, including thermophiles, psychrophiles, acidophiles, halophiles, and others, and…
Maria N Chasapi, Nicholas Kontis, Robert Lehmann, Ruqaiya Tasneem + 15 more
Life thrives in Earth’s most inhospitable environments, from boiling hydrothermal vents to hypersaline lakes and frozen polar deserts, thanks to the remarkable adaptations of extremophilic microorganisms. The study of these organisms has rapidly evolved from early cultivation-based discoveries to a data-rich discipline…
Fabrizia Sepe, Ezia Costanzo, Elena Ionata, Loredana Marcolongo + 1 more
'Xiuzhu Dong'] Title: Simple Summary The combined effects of dwindling global resources and an ever-increasing human population have led to a growing focus on sustainability issues. From this perspective, extremophiles, microorganisms that have evolved unique survival strategies for some of the most extreme…
Vladimíra Krempaská, Michaela Murgašová, Matej Vesteg
Extremophiles are microorganisms capable of surviving and thriving under extreme environmental conditions, such as high or low temperatures, extreme pH, elevated pressure or high salinity. These organisms have evolved specialized physiological and biochemical adaptations that enable them to metabolize toxic compounds…
James A Coker
Despite the typical human notion that the Earth is a habitable planet, over three quarters of our planet is uninhabitable by us without assistance. The organisms that live and thrive in these “inhospitable” environments are known by the name extremophiles and are found in all Domains of Life. Despite our general lack…
Mohea Couturier, Simone Antonio De Rose, Isaac Cann, Melina Kerou
Extremophilic environments are routinely exposed to extreme environmental conditions, such as boiling/freezing temperatures, acidic/alkaline pH, high salinity, high pressure, or the presence of toxic substances, where conventional life forms might struggle to survive. These environments are often found in parts of the…
Monireh Safari, Joseph Butler, Gurjit S. Randhawa, Kathleen A. Hill + 1 more
Extreme environments impose strong mutation and selection pressures that drive distinctive, yet understudied, genomic adaptations in extremophiles. In this study, we identify 15 bacterium–archaeon pairs that exhibit highly similar k-mer–based genomic signatures despite maximal taxonomic divergence, suggesting that…
Ian von Hegner
Since time immemorial life has been viewed as fragile, yet over the past few decades it has been found that many extreme environments are inhabited by organisms known as extremophiles. Knowledge of their emergence, adaptability, and limitations seems to provide a guideline for the search of extra-terrestrial life…
Siddharth Hegde, Lisa Kaltenegger
The search for extrasolar planets has already detected rocky planets and several planetary candidates with minimum masses that are consistent with rocky planets in the habitable zone of their host stars. A low-resolution spectrum in the form of a color-color diagram of an exoplanet is likely to be one of the first…
Ian von Hegner
Extremophiles have gained prominence by providing an experimental approach to astrobiology. Extremophiles gain equal value by being part of a framework for high-level characterisation of the evolutionary mechanisms that must necessarily restrict or promote their emergence and presence on solar system bodies. Thus…
Pablo Millán Arias, Joseph Butler, Gurjit S. Randhawa, Maximillian P. M. Soltysiak + 2 more
This study provides comprehensive quantitative evidence suggesting that adaptations to extreme temperatures and pH imprint a discernible environmental component in the genomic signature of microbial extremophiles. Both supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms were used to analyze genomic signatures, each…
Raees Khan, Muhammad Israr Khan, Amir Zeb, Nazish Roy + 6 more
Extremophiles, the microorganisms thriving in extreme environments, provide valuable resources for practicing novel biotechnological processes. Pakistan homes a wide spectrum of extreme environments which harbor various biotechnologically significant microorganisms. This review gauges the structural and functional…
Jessica M. Downing, Sarah C. L. Lock, Manuela Iovinella, John Davey + 8 more
Extremophiles, while typically bacteria and archaea, are also found in the eukaryotic domain of life. The eukaryote Galdieria sulphuraria is a thermoacidophilic red alga belonging to the class Cyanidiophyceae, an especially unique class as it comprises the basal clade of eukaryotic extremophiles. Galdieria species can…
Randall R. Correll, Simon P. Worden
The colonization of Mars presents extraordinary challenges, including radiation exposure, low atmospheric pressure, and toxic regolith. Recent advancements in synthetic biology and genetic engineering offer unprecedented opportunities to address these obstacles by utilizing terrestrial extremophiles and engineered…
Alicyn Reverdy, Daniel Hathaway, Jessica Jha, Gabriel Michaels + 5 more
The Atacama Desert, the driest and oldest desert in the world, is a hostile environment for life. Despite the inhospitable conditions, bacterial sequences detected in this location suggest rich bacterial life. This study tested the idea that certain bacteria would thrive in this location and that some of them could be…
Huang, Tran, Rodgers, Douglas H. Bartlett + 2 more
From a purely operational standpoint, the existence of microbes that can grow under extreme conditions, or "extremophiles", leads to the question of how the molecules making up these microbes can maintain both their structure and function. While microbes that live under extremes of temperature have been heavily…
Authors not listed
Considering the harsh surface conditions on Mars, terrestrial organisms that can survive and remain detectable after exposure to similar conditions provide invaluable models for guiding current and future search-for-life missions. To this end, we evaluated the extremophilic archaeon Acidianus manzaensis grown on…
Ricardo Cavicchioli
Microbes are the most abundant lifeforms on the planet and perform functions critical for all other life to exist. Environmental ‘omic’ technologies provide the capacity to discover the ‘what, how and why’ of indigenous species. However, in order to accurately interpret this data, sound conceptual frameworks are…
Danaé Bregnard, Guillaume Cailleau, Wart van Zonneveld, Simona Regenspurg + 2 more
Progresses in geothermal energy and deep drilling technologies have opened a new window into the terrestrial subsurface. This provides direct access to deep geothermal fluids used to produce heat and electricity, creating an opportunity to isolate and characterize novel microbial strains from these extreme habitats. In…
Ahanjit Bhattacharya, Isaac D. Falk, Frank R. Moss III, Thomas M. Weiss + 3 more
Archaea, the third fundamental domain of life are distinguished from bacteria and eukaryotes due to the presence of unique lipids in their cell membranes. Archaeal bipolar lipids are among the most unusual lipids occurring in nature because of their presumed ability to span the entire membrane. They are challenging to…