Antarctic microbes lives up to the extreme

Chilean Antarctic Survey dramatic variety of organisms is adapted unusual conditions.Chilean scientists looked for organisms with characteristics which could be developed into useful biotechnology.Jenny Blamey

You don't expect bacteria in Antarctic ice well suited to life in a boiling Kettle, his life, but that's what discovered Chilean scientists during an expedition in the last year. The researchers have adapted more than 200 new species of micro-organisms for life in extreme environments transformed.

"We have discovered more than 300 micro-organisms, of which 70% new types match" Jenny Blamey, biochemist and Director of the life sciences Foundation in Santiago, a leading organization in Antarctic bio-resources, says a public-private initiative in the year 2008 started to identify biological resources with biotechnological applications in this largely unexplored area. You and her colleagues were part of Antarctic scientific expedition 47 (ECA-47), which was organized Chilean Antarctic Institute in Puntas arenas by the and several research projects over the southern summer were involved. The team presented some of its findings at a press conference in Punta Arenas, Chile, last month.

Blamey's team is focused on the search for extremophiles in the South Shetland Islands. They were not disappointed.

As expected, the Group discovers many Psychrophiles - organisms that thrive in conditions cooler as 15 ° C - and habitats, to survive the high concentrations of salt, and Acidophiles, and Alkaliphiles the extreme pH can tolerate.

The researchers found but also surprisingly many Thermophiles and Hyperthermophiles, prefer temperatures above 50 ° C, including a Microbe that encased to survive spending at 95 ° C despite his life in the ice. Such organism, they say, must have developed as the Antarctic environment was, as it is today very different.

Another strange discovery is a previously unknown Deinococcus - a group of bacteria known as the world's toughest - claims tolerate location γ-ray 5,000 times greater than survived the organism known by others despite living 15 meters below the permafrost. These levels of radiation never exist on Earth, so that the source of resistance of bacteria is a mystery. Theories put here so far are that had the germ of an extraterrestrial origin. Blamey says, that at this time no theory has been ignored.

"We try to understand the molecular mechanisms that provide such levels of resistance." We wish what mechanisms has this micro-organism, protect themselves from the effects of radiation, to determine and develop their potential uses, ", says they."

The team has also Psychrophiles resistant against UV radiation, the enzymes use, capture identified to reactive oxygen species. These organisms may be practical biotechnological applications: Researchers predict that she finally have a use in technologies to protect the people from solar could find and UV radiation.

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A potentially useful organism in shallow marine sediment samples had isolated the opportunity to grow in very salty environments and at temperatures 4 ° Freddy B?hm, biologist on the bioscience Foundation, the molecular strategies to live with which these microorganisms under extreme conditions examined c. lab tests. He says, in that some of the molecules, which are known in the microbes on Biostabilizers, and he suggests that she could have applications in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.

Paris Lavin, a microbiologist at the Chilean Antarctic Institute, studied 270 strains Actinomycete - the order that produced antibiotics streptomycin - by seven lagoons on the Antarctic King George Iceland, one of the South Shetland Islands isolated. Because the organisms have been so remote, other bacteria are unlikely that toxins have developed resistance to the antibiotics they produce, making them good candidates for new drugs.

Lavin says that the extreme temperatures and exposure allow the area to ultraviolet radiation in Antarctica "as a natural laboratory work that promotes the selection of organisms resistant to such press". And the solutions which evolution has come up with a use elsewhere in the world could find.

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