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Exploration of Extremophiles for Value-Added Products
Published in Pratibha Dheeran, Sachin Kumar, Extremophiles, 2022
Surojit Bera, Trinetra Mukherjee, Subhabrata Das, Sandip Mondal, Suprabhat Mukherjee, Sagnik Chakraborty
A significant extremophile contribution to the medical field comes from an innovative method for distributing vaccines. Several microorganisms develop internal vesicles of gas, small gaseous protein-filled structures, the best known from the halophilic archaea. There are no literature findings that include archaea in animal disease, regardless of temperature dependence. However, the immune system in mammals responds to membrane lipid components in archaea, which is of particular pharmaceutical interest because these are being investigated as possible vehicles for drug delivery. The peculiar lipid properties found in Archaea have resulted in the creation of archaeal liposomes, or archaeosomes. Their properties allow for the development of liposomes at or below any temperature within the physiological range, enabling the encapsulation of thermally labile compounds and serving as novel drug delivery agents. They also target mononuclear phagocytes, and these cells can take on more readily than liposomes made from ester lipids. This property makes them ideal candidates for antigen transmission, as carriers, or as directly stimulating adjuvants to the immune system (Jacquemet et al. 2009). Fragments of the cell membrane from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus culminated in a comparable immune reaction to that seen with lipopolysaccharide and other Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria (Abrevaya 2012).
Wastewater microbiology
Published in Rumana Riffat, Taqsim Husnain, Fundamentals of Wastewater Treatment and Engineering, 2022
At the molecular level, both archaea and bacteria are structurally prokaryotic. But they are evolutionarily distinct from one another. Archaea was previously known as the archaebacteria (Madigan et al., 2021). Their cell wall, cell material, and RNA composition are different from bacteria. Some archaea are important in anaerobic processes, e.g. methanogens that produce methane gas from the degradation of organic matter under anaerobic conditions. These include Methanobacterium, Methanosarcina, and Methanothrix that are important in the anaerobic digestion of sludge. Some archaea exhibit highly specialized metabolic pathways and are found under extreme environmental conditions. One distinct group is the hyperthermophiles. They are obligate anaerobes and have a temperature optimum above 80°C. Examples are Thermoproteus, Sulfolobus, Methanopyrus. Extremely halophilic archaea are another diverse group that inhabits highly saline environments, such as solar salt evaporation ponds. Examples are Halobacterium and Halococcus.
Molecular Biology of Thermophilic and Psychrophilic Archaea
Published in Ajar Nath Yadav, Ali Asghar Rastegari, Neelam Yadav, Microbiomes of Extreme Environments, 2021
Chaitali Ghosh, Jitendra Singh Rathore
Archaeal cell walls have pseudomurein (or pseudopeptidoglycan) and lack peptidoglycan which is universally present in all bacterial cell walls (White 2000). The membrane structure of archaea plays a significant role in their survival in hostile environments. Archaeal membranes are composed of isoprenoid alcohols and glycerol linked by ether bond, instead of ester linkage between fatty acid and glycerol as usually observed in eukaryotes and prokaryotes (White 2000). Due to the isoprenoid chain branching and resultant reduced tertiary carbon mobility, ether lipids are more stable than ester lipids, and therefore are less easily degraded, having high salt tolerance, and are able to withstand thermal and mechanical challenges (Konings et al. 2002; van de Vossenberg et al. 1998). Structural modifications such as, having cyclopentane rings that decrease membrane fluidity, also used within the archaeal membranes thrive at high temperatures. However, those that survive at low temperatures have higher numbers of double bonds in their lipids to increase membrane fluidity.
Cost-effective, high-yield production of Pyrobaculum calidifontis DNA polymerase for PCR application
Published in Preparative Biochemistry & Biotechnology, 2023
Kashif Maseh, Syed Farhat Ali, Shazeel Ahmad, Naeem Rashid
Archaea constitute the third domain of life. Over past years, a lot of new species of this domain have been discovered and characterized - many of which are extremophiles.[1] Initially Euryarchaeota and Crenarchaeota were the two main phyla of this domain. However, with broader environmental sampling, many new archaeal species were discovered which do not fall in these phyla. This led to a redesign of archaeal taxonomy. Currently the archaeal superphyla include Asgard, DPANN and TACK.[2] Archaea have gained much attention because of extreme environments they dwell. Their enzymes are stable in harsh environments and find application in a variety of industrial processes.[3] Some examples include carbohydrate acting enzymes, proteases, lipases, dehydrogenases, isomerases and DNA polymerases.[4,5]
Field sampling of indoor bioaerosols
Published in Aerosol Science and Technology, 2020
Jennie Cox, Hamza Mbareche, William G. Lindsley, Caroline Duchaine
Archaea are ubiquitous microbes in a vast range of environments including soils, oceans, and human and animal skin and gastrointestinal tracts. No archaea are presently known to be human pathogens, but this may change as more is understood about these microorganisms (Lurie-Weinberger and Gophna 2015). Archaea are understudied in bioaerosols, and their presence in indoor air and factors affecting their abundance are not well characterized. Exposure to archaea is known to induce a full immune response in a murine model of airway exposure (Blais Lecours et al. 2011).
Microbiology in Water-Miscible Metalworking Fluids
Published in Tribology Transactions, 2020
Frederick J. Passman, Peter Küenzi
Originally thought to inhabit extreme and harsh environments only—extreme temperatures and highly saline, acidic, or alkaline media (41)—archaea have now been acknowledged to be ubiquitous, including mesophiles that live in mild conditions in marshes, sewage, the oceans, and soils. However, our knowledge here is predominantly based on genomic data (42).