Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © American Society for Microbiology, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of
American Society for Microbiology for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published
in Applied and Environmental Microbiology 71 (2005): 6383-6387, doi:10.1128/AEM.71.10.6383-6387.2005.
Description:
The ability of metabolically diverse hyperthermophilic archaea to withstand high temperatures, low pHs, high sulfide concentrations, and the absence of carbon and energy sources was investigated. Close relatives of our study organisms, Methanocaldococcus jannaschii, Archaeoglobus profundus, Thermococcus fumicolans, and Pyrococcus sp. strain GB-D, are commonly found in hydrothermal vent chimney walls and hot sediments and possibly deeper in the subsurface, where highly dynamic hydrothermal flow patterns and steep chemical and temperature gradients provide an ever-changing mosaic of microhabitats. These organisms (with the possible exception of Pyrococcus strain GB-D) tolerated greater extremes of low pH, high sulfide concentration, and high temperature when actively growing and metabolizing than when starved of carbon sources and electron donors/acceptors. Therefore these organisms must be actively metabolizing in the hydrothermal vent chimneys, sediments, and subsurface in order to withstand at least 24 h of exposure to extremes of pH, sulfide, and temperature that occur in these environments.
Description:
This study was supported by the NSF (Life in Extreme Environments
grant OCE-0085534 to A.T., S.J.M., S.B., K.G.L., S.B., and
C.O.W.), the MBL (Environmental Genomes, S/C NCC2-1054) and
URI (Subsurface Biospheres) NASA Astrobiology Institute Teams
(A.T. and S.J.M.), an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbial Biology
(M.S.A.), and an NRC Astrobiology postdoctoral fellowship
(V.P.E.).
Keywords:
Hyperthermophilic archaea
;
Hydrothermal vents
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
66771 bytes
Format:
application/pdf
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