Growth and Metabolism of Extremophilic Microorganisms

Tse, Ching; Ma, Kesen

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-13521-2_1

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 303 publications

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“…A plausible explanation can be the extreme environmental conditions displayed in these environments, and the biological implications that living under these conditions have. To survive, microorganisms have developed unique metabolic capacities, some of which are of interest to researchers in different areas [44]. This observation pinpoints the need to intensify the research in underrepresented arid environments, to have a thoroughgoing knowledge of the physicochemical and microbial characteristics of arid soils globally.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbial communities from arid environments on a global scale. A systematic review

et al. 2020

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Arid environments are defined by the lack of water availability, which is directly related to the mean annual precipitation (MAP), and high values of solar irradiation, which impacts the community composition of animals, plants, and the microbial structure of the soil. Recent advances in NGS technologies have expanded our ability to characterize microbiomes, allowing environmental microbiologists to explore the complete microbial structure. Intending to identify and describe the state-of-the-art of bacterial communities in arid soils at a global scale, and to address the effect that some environmental features may have on them, we performed a systematic review based on the PRISMA guideline. Using a combination of keywords, we identified a collection of 66 studies, including 327 sampled sites, reporting the arid soil bacterial community composition by 16S rDNA gene high-throughput sequencing. To identify factors that can modulate bacterial communities, we extracted the geographical, environmental, and physicochemical data. The results indicate that even though each sampled site was catalogued as arid, they show wide variability in altitude, mean annual temperature (MAT), soil pH and electric conductivity, within and between arid environments. We show that arid soils display a higher abundance of Actinobacteria and lower abundance of Proteobacteria, Cyanobacteria, and Planctomycetes, compared with non-arid soil microbiomes, revealing that microbial structure seems to be strongly modulated by MAP and MAT and not by pH in arid soils. We observed that environmental and physicochemical features were scarcely described among studies, hence, we propose a reporting guideline for further analysis, which will allow deepening the knowledge of the relationship between the microbiome and abiotic factors in arid soil. Finally, to understand the academic collaborations landscape, we developed an analysis of the author’s network, corroborating a low degree of connectivity and collaborations in this research topic. Considering that it is crucial to understand how microbial processes develop and change in arid soils, our analysis emphasizes the need to increase collaborations between research groups worldwide.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbial communities from arid environments on a global scale. A systematic review

et al. 2020

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“…Extremophile microorganisms that exist in environmental conditions like the Atacama arid highlands have unique metabolic capacities and/or physical structures which allow them to survive in these oligotrophic conditions (Tse and Ma, 2016). It is intriguing to understand how these microorganisms use various substrates and metabolic pathways to endure and how this undiscovered chemical diversity could be used for biotechnological applications (Bull and Asenjo, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil Bacterial Communities From the Chilean Andean Highlands: Taxonomic Composition and Culturability

Maza

Maldonado

Vásquez-Dean

et al. 2019

Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.

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The Atacama Desert is a highly complex, extreme ecosystem which harbors microorganisms remarkable for their biotechnological potential. Here, a soil bacterial prospection was carried out in the high Altiplano region of the Atacama Desert (>3,800 m above sea level; m a.s.l.), where direct anthropogenic interference is minimal. We studied: (1) soil bacterial community composition using high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene and (2) bacterial culturability, by using a soil extract medium (SEM) under a factorial design of three factors: temperature (15 and 30°C), nutrient content (high and low nutrient disposal) and oxygen availability (presence and absence). A total of 4,775 OTUs were identified and a total of 101 isolates were selected for 16S rRNA sequencing, 82 of them corresponded to unique or non-redundant sequences. To expand our view of the Altiplano landscape and to obtain a better representation of its microbiome, we complemented our Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) and isolate collection with data from other previous data from our group and obtained a merged set of OTUs and isolates that we used to perform our study. Taxonomic comparisons between culturable microbiota and metabarcoding data showed an overrepresentation of the phylum Firmicutes (44% of isolates vs. 2% of OTUs) and an underrepresentation of Proteobacteria (8% of isolates vs. 36% of OTUs). Within the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) results, 33% of the OTUs were unknown up to genus, revealing an important proportion of putative new species in this environment. Biochemical characterization and analysis extracted from the literature indicated that an important number of our isolates had biotechnological potential. Also, by comparing our results with similar studies on other deserts, the Altiplano highland was most similar to a cold arid desert. In summary, our study contributes to expand the knowledge of soil bacterial communities in the Atacama Desert and complements the pipeline to isolate selective bacteria that could represent new potential biotechnological resources.

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“…Thermophiles fall into three groups. The moderate and extreme thermophiles, with optimum biodegradation temperatures of 40–59 °C and 60–85 °C, respectively, and the hyper-thermophiles, with optimum temperatures >85 °C [13,14]. Several advantages are associated with the use of thermophiles (Figure 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…High temperatures lead to increased kinetic reactions (thus, high reaction rates) and high mass transfer, thus increasing the biodegradation. In addition, high temperature has a significant influence on the bioavailability of petroleum hydrocarbons, especially PAHs, by decreasing their viscosity, leading to an increase in their diffusion coefficients, therefore improving their availability to microorganisms [13,14]. All of these properties have made thermophiles a valuable source of enzymes in industrial biotechnology [15,16,17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Current Status of the Degradation of Aliphatic and Aromatic Petroleum Hydrocarbons by Thermophilic Microbes and Future Perspectives

Nzila

2018

IJERPH

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Contamination of the environment by petroleum products is a growing concern worldwide, and strategies to remove these contaminants have been evaluated. One of these strategies is biodegradation, which consists of the use of microorganisms. Biodegradation is significantly improved by increasing the temperature of the medium, thus, the use of thermophiles, microbes that thrive in high-temperature environments, will render this process more efficient. For instance, various thermophilic enzymes have been used in industrial biotechnology because of their unique catalytic properties. Biodegradation has been extensively studied in the context of mesophilic microbes, and the mechanisms of biodegradation of aliphatic and aromatic petroleum hydrocarbons have been elucidated. However, in comparison, little work has been carried out on the biodegradation of petroleum hydrocarbons by thermophiles. In this paper, a detailed review of the degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons (both aliphatic and aromatic) by thermophiles was carried out. This work has identified the characteristics of thermophiles, and unraveled specific catabolic pathways of petroleum products that are only found with thermophiles. Gaps that limit our understanding of the activity of these microbes have also been highlighted, and, finally, different strategies that can be used to improve the efficiency of degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons by thermophiles were proposed.

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Growth and Metabolism of Extremophilic Microorganisms

Cited by 11 publications

References 303 publications

Microbial communities from arid environments on a global scale. A systematic review

Microbial communities from arid environments on a global scale. A systematic review

Soil Bacterial Communities From the Chilean Andean Highlands: Taxonomic Composition and Culturability

Current Status of the Degradation of Aliphatic and Aromatic Petroleum Hydrocarbons by Thermophilic Microbes and Future Perspectives

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