About the book
Extremophilic microbes are microorganisms that can grow under a remarkable range of extreme environments such as glacial deserts, hot springs, ocean floors, hypersalted environments, rocks of the Earth's mantle. These include acidophiles, alkaliphiles, halophiles, barophiles, (hyper) thermophiles, and psychrophiles. These hostile environments shelter the rich biodiversity of extremophiles which could belong to one of the three domains of life (Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes). These microbes have evolved several mechanisms to ensure genomic integrity, cell division, and energy conservation in extreme conditions. They present a wide and versatile metabolic and enzymatic diversity coupled with extraordinary physiological capacities in rich extreme environments. These enzymes and metabolites have been exploited to develop clean and sustainable industrial processes. Antibiotics, compatible solutes, and other compounds obtainable from these microbes are also finding a variety of uses. Recently, several investigations have been started to study the phylogenetic relationship between extremophilic microbes through the analysis of their genome sequences. Hence, comparative genomic analyses of genomes allowed the identification of distinctive genes and metabolic pathways involved in the extremophilic way of life. Such analyses provided key data that enabled us to understand gene functionality across organisms and environments and track the evolutionary events involved in environmental adaptations at the population and strain levels.
