23 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
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 \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym}…
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…
Han Zhu, Liang Zhang, Zhao Hao, Enyong Chen + 5 more
Title: Simple Summary Life is found almost everywhere on Earth, including places with extreme heat, salt, or pressure. These extreme environments are home to unique microbes, known as extremophiles, that are specially adapted to these harsh conditions. But does living in such a place still feel “stressful” to them?…
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…
Justinas Babinskas, Jokūbas Krutkevičius, Lada Lukić Bilela, Renata Bešta‐Gajević + 1 more
Enzymes derived from extremophiles, or extremozymes, possess unique properties that enable them to function under extreme environmental conditions. Microbial communities in subterranean ecosystems have evolved specialized metabolic pathways to survive, leading to the discovery of bioactive molecules with diverse…
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…
Adrienne Kish, Velislava Ilieva
Extremophiles are used to study both the limits of life and its potential elsewhere. Categories are commonly employed to describe extreme conditions, however, changing the focus to the underlying chemical alterations of cellular biomolecules permits a clearer delineation of the limits of life. This also provides a…
Guillaume Terradot, Vincent Danos
All cells must sustain ionic motive forces (IMFs) -- the electrochemical gradients of permeant ions, together with the membrane potential they produce -- to regulate intracellular pH, drive secondary transport, and power ATP synthesis. Because membranes are imperfectly impermeable, IMFs continuously dissipate through…
Elisa Ravaro, David J. Burr, Xavier Marques, Andreas Elsaesser + 1 more
Prokaryotes, particularly those in extreme environments, are capable of diverse metabolic states resulting in altered cell envelope structure and function. However, these changes are difficult to assess as standard fluorescent probes are often incompatible with extreme conditions and/or extremophile cell physiology.…
Ge Liu, Jie Zhu, Ying Sun, Rui Liu + 8 more
Serpentinization drives abiotic synthesis of organics (e.g., hydrocarbon) potentially conducive to the emergence of life, making serpentinite-hosted systems and associated microbial community key windows into nature of life’s origin. Although cultivation-independent studies uncovered the Candisdatus Bipolaricaulota…
Lucie Gallot-Lavallée, Ronie Haro, Jon Jerlström-Hultqvist, Dmytro Tymoshenko + 2 more
Compared with bacterial and archaeal extremophiles, single-celled eukaryotes living in extreme habitats are understudied and underrepresented in genomic databases. An exception is the obligately halophilic stramenopile Halocafeteria seosinensis strain EHF34. A transcriptome-focused analysis of this extremophilic…
Stewart Gault
Organisms and their enzymes adapt to environmental temperatures, such that thermophilic enzymes exhibit high melting and optimum temperatures while psychrophilic enzymes exhibit low values for both. It has been proposed that the gap between an enzyme’s optimum temperature and its melting temperature, the temperature…
Fátima Silvina Galván, Virginia Helena Albarracín
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is widely used to investigate bacterial surface architecture; however, sample preparation protocols may introduce structural artefacts that compromise the interpretation of morphometric and ultrastructural features. This issue becomes especially relevant for extremophilic…
Adam Robinson, Shannon McQuaig-Ulrich, Tyler Dondero, Aaron Celestian + 1 more
The present-day martian surface is generally considered inhospitable to life because of low atmospheric pressure, intense surface radiation, global desiccation, and oxidizing chemistry which has been increasing since the late Noachian. However, shallow martian subsurface regions where mineralogy has shown groundwater…
Siddharth Bhatnagar, Emeline Bolmont, Nikita J. Boeren, Janina Hansen + 17 more
Siddharth Bhatnagar\ ★ [0000 −0001 −9178 −168 , Emeline Bolmont\ ★ [0000 −0001 −5657 −4503 , Nikita J. Boeren\ [0000 −0001 −6162 −6953 , Janina Hansen\ [0009 −0003 −1247 −8378 , Bjorn Konrad\ ¨ [0000 −0002 −9912 −8340 , Leander Schlarmann\ [0000 −0001 −5800 −132 , Eleonora Alei [0000 −0002 −0006 −1175 , Marie Azevedo…
Swathi Raviprakash, Madhu Kashyap Jagadeesh, Margarita Safonova, Oleg Kotsyurbenko
The study of planetary habitability beyond Earth remains a central and challenging project in planetary science. Analysis of large volumes of planetary data from space missions such as CoRoT, Kepler, and JWST is directed ultimately at finding a planet similar to Earth, the Earth's twin, and answering the question of…
Daliah Raquel Bibas, Clément Vidal
Detection claims surrounding life beyond Earth often attract intense attention because the question of whether we are alone in the cosmos carries unusually high scientific, social, philosophical, and theological stakes. This chapter compares two high uncertainty life-detection claims, the 2020 phosphine detection claim…
Authors not listed
Background: Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) of bacterial origin are considered as a promising alternative to traditional antibiotics and a good solution to the problem of antibiotic resistance. Additionally, many of them exhibit other types of biological activity. Therefore, in recent years, the interest of researchers…
Authors not listed
Photosynthetic biohybrids, often in the form of biophotoelectrochemical devices, aim to achieve solar-to-chemical conversion by pairing biotic and abiotic materials, leveraging the beneficial attributes of both. Numerous works have highlighted the importance of a well-tuned bio-electrode interface for high…
Authors not listed
Deciphering how primitive, inanimate matter organized into living systems is a central challenge in origins of life research. In this context, protocells—primitive cell-like compartments—are widely considered as plausible intermediates linking nonliving chemistry with early biological systems. Among various protocell…
Scott M. Perl, Anna Grace Ulses, Connor O. Metz, Nancy Y. Kiang + 15 more
mary.n.parenteau@nasa.gov University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY, USA. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA. University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.…
Gregory M. Davis, Jonathan Horner, Bradley D. Carter, Stephen C Marsden
The study of the origin of life on Earth has been broadened due to panspermia models that suggest that early life may have been transferred between planets. Mars likely once had conditions that could support life, and it is interesting therefore to consider the question of early interplanetary transfer of life from…
Slava G. Turyshev
Natural panspermia is a transport-and-establishment hypothesis, not a theory of abiogenesis. The Earth-specific question is whether any nonterrestrial donor remains competitive with terrestrial origin once launch, planetary-system escape, transit, Earth interception, atmospheric entry, terminal loading, and…