Microbiomes in extremely acidic environments: functionalities and interactions that allow survival and growth of prokaryotes at low pH.

Microbiomes in extremely acidic environments: functionalities and interactions that allow survival and growth of prokaryotes at low pH. Curr Opin Microbiol. 2018 Feb 06;43:139-147 Authors: Quatrini R, Johnson DB Abstract Extremely acidic environments have global distribution and can have natural or, increasingly, anthropogenic origins. Extreme acidophiles grow optimally at pH 3 or less, have multiple strategies for tolerating stresses that accompany high levels of acidity and are scattered in all three domains of the tree of life. Metagenomic studies have expanded knowledge of the diversity of extreme acidophile communities, their ecological networks and their metabolic potentials, both confirmed and inferred. High resolution compositional and functional profiling of these microbiomes have begun to reveal spatial diversity patterns at global, regional, local, zonal and micro-scales. Future integration of genomic and other meta-omic data will offer new opportunities to utilize acidic microbiomes and to engineer beneficial interactions within them in biotechnologies. PMID: 29414445 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Current Opinion in Microbiology - Category: Microbiology Authors: Tags: Curr Opin Microbiol Source Type: research