Life in Extreme Environments

✍ Scribed by Stephan Ulamec, Jens Biele, Oliver Funke, Marc Engelhardt (auth.), Ricardo Amils, Cynan Ellis-Evans, Helmut Hinghofer-Szalkay (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 439
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

From the deepest seafloor to the highest mountain, from the hottest region to the cold Antarctic plateau, environments labeled as extreme are numerous on Earth and they present a wide variety of features and characteristics. The life processes occurring within these environments are equally diverse, not only depending on stress factors (e.g. temperature, pressure, pH and chemicals) but also on the type of life forms, ranging from microbes to higher species. How is life limited by and adapted to extreme external biotic and abiotic factors? This key question summarises the deliberations raised by this exciting and fascinating research area. Addressing the challenge of answering this question would help to reveal new insights and refine theories concerning the origin and evolution of life on our planet, as well as life beyond Earth. Investigating life processes under extreme conditions can also bring clues for understanding and predicting ecosystems' responses to global changes. Furthermore, this area of research has a wide application potential in the fields of (bio)technoloty, chemical industry, pharmaceutics, biomedicine or cosmetics.

(Investigating Life in Extreme Environments - A European perspective, European Science Foundation, May 2007)

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages I-VIII
Access to glacial and subglacial environments in the Solar System by melting probe technology....Pages 1-24
Exploration of Ellsworth Subglacial Lake: a concept paper on the development, organisation and execution of an experiment to explore, measure and sample the environment of a West Antarctic subglacial lake....Pages 25-43
Thermostable proteins as probe for the design of advanced fluorescence biosensors....Pages 45-54
Astrobiological significance of minerals on Mars surface environment....Pages 55-67
Industrial barrens: extreme habitats created by non-ferrous metallurgy....Pages 69-97
Viruses in extreme environments....Pages 99-113
Microbial ecology of submerged marine caves and holes characterized by high levels of hydrogen sulphide....Pages 115-124
Extremely halophilic archaea and the issue of long-term microbial survival....Pages 125-140
Planktonic microbial assemblages and the potential effects of metazooplankton predation on the food web of lakes from the maritime Antarctica and sub-Antarctic islands....Pages 141-159
Fungi in Antarctica....Pages 161-175
Ecology and molecular adaptations of the halophilic black yeast Hortaea werneckii ....Pages 177-185
Ultraviolet radiation shapes seaweed communities....Pages 187-212
Life strategy, ecophysiology and ecology of seaweeds in polar waters....Pages 213-244
Life expansion in Sørkapp Land, Spitsbergen, under the current climate warming....Pages 245-249
Some views on plants in polar and alpine regions....Pages 251-263
Desiccation-tolerant plants in dry environments....Pages 265-275
Energy dependant plant stress acclimation....Pages 277-285
Post-capture investigations of hydrothermal vent macro-invertebrates to study adaptations to extreme environments....Pages 287-295
Adaptations to hypoxia in hydrothermal-vent and cold-seep invertebrates....Pages 297-313
How does the annelid Alvinella pompejana deal with an extreme hydrothermal environment?....Pages 315-339
Pressure and life: some biological strategies....Pages 341-355
Molecular evolution of haemoglobins of polar fishes....Pages 357-368
Metal detoxification and homeostasis in Antarctic Notothenioids. A comparative survey on evolution, expression and functional properties of fish and mammal metallothioneins....Pages 369-383
Predicting the impacts of climate change on the evolutionary adaptations of polar fish....Pages 385-397
Human challenges in polar and space environments....Pages 399-414
Hypometabolic induced state: a potential tool in biomedicine and space exploration....Pages 415-428
A proposed classification of environmental adaptation: the example of high altitude....Pages 429-435
The challenge of the food sufficiency through salt tolerant crops....Pages 437-450

✦ Subjects

Microbiology; Plant Sciences; Popular Science in Nature and Environment; Environmental Engineering/Biotechnology