About this Research Topic
Due to the extreme physicochemical conditions of polar environments, bioactive secondary metabolites produced by polar microorganisms may have enormous scaffold diversity and structural complexity. Moreover, cold-active genes derived from the Arctic and Antarctic microorganisms are considered as valuable sources for antifreeze proteins, extracellular polymeric substances, and polyunsaturated fatty acids with potential applications in medicine, agriculture, food and textile industries. Although several natural products with bioactivity and cold-active enzymes have been isolated from polar and subpolar environments, there is an urgent need to uncover microbial biodiversity and bioprospection potential of these environments by employing culture-dependent and culture-independent genomics approaches, including the construction of metagenomic-assembled genomes. Understanding the microbial and chemical diversity of the Arctic and Antarctic habitats will also provide an opportunity to relate these diversities to the ecosystem and evolutionary parameters.
The scope of this Research Topic covers the exploration of microbial biodiversity in the Arctic and Antarctic habitats, including microbial symbioses, by employing culture-dependent and high throughput culture-independent approaches. Moreover, the topic involves the exploitation of polar microorganisms or genetic resources to discover novel genes coding for bioactive metabolites or cold-active enzymes.
This topic welcomes original research articles, reviews, and methods emphasizing but not limited to the following themes:
• Culturing and identifying novel microorganisms from the Arctic and Antarctic habitats;
• Exploration of microbial diversity by metagenome-assembled genomes in polar regions;
• Bioactivity screening using cutting-edge technologies to exploit polar microorganisms for bioprospection;
• Integration of multiple data derived from biodiversity and genomics research to model ecosystem functioning in polar regions.
This Research Topic was coordinated by Dr. Hilal Ay, who is working as an academician in Turkey. Her research interests cover microbial systematics and biotechnology. She recently joined the Turkish Antarctic Expedition to collect samples for exploring novel actinobacteria with potential applications in aquaculture.
Keywords: Genomics, Antarctica, Arctic, Biodiversity, Biotechnology, Genome mining, Metagenome-assembled genome
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.