About this Research Topic

Background

Extremophiles are unique microorganisms adapted to survive in ecological niches characterized by high or low temperatures, extreme pH, high salt concentrations, and high pressure. To survive in harsh environmental conditions, extremophiles require special adaptations, including genetic changes which are followed by further changes in protein sequence and structure. Since most extremophilic microorganisms are uncultured, their adaptive strategies are often studied through genomics and proteomics, to provide insights into metabolic pathways, transport mechanisms, substrate biotransformation, and enzymatic mechanisms. Modifying proteins through gene-recombinant techniques helps enhance thermal stability, pH tolerance, solvent tolerance, specificity, and activity of many enzymes.

The current global energy trends and non-renewable resources require alternative, sustainable, efficient, and financially viable energy sources. Biofuels such as bioethanol, biodiesel, biobutanol, and biogas can be produced from organic substrates, for example sugars, starch, oil crops, lignocellulosic biomass, and agricultural and animal wastes. The energy extracted from solid, liquid, and/or gaseous organic substrates like bioethanol, biodiesel, biomethane, etc., is referred to as bioenergy. Extremozymes from thermophilic organisms play a valuable role in biotechnology and are widely used in industrial applications due to their characteristics of remaining active under harsh processing conditions. In recent years, new enzymes in extremophiles have been identified with the help of “omics” technology. Meta-genomics, meta-transcriptomics, metabolomics, and meta-proteomics help in discovering and developing applications of extremophiles in biorefinery and thus achieving sustainable biofuel production. Bioinformatics-supported in-situ mutagenesis and gene shuffling techniques modify the stability of proteins. Genomic study of thermophilic bacteria and archaea (Thermotoga, Thermoplasma, Pyrococcus, and Thermus) has identified suitable enzymes for biorefinery.

While increasing numbers of novel bacterial species were found to hold potential for metabolic engineering, only a handful of bacteria have actually been employed for industrial bioproduction – and only for the synthesis of very few, structurally simple compounds. These limitations can be traced to the dearth of tools for targeted genome engineering of bacterial chassis, the cellular hosts used as recipient of engineered biological systems in synthetic biology. Nowadays, synthetic biology is significantly helping to bridge such a knowledge gap; the application of synthetic biology technology to extremophilic microorganisms and enzymes can provide new solutions to some problems encountered in industrial production.

This Research Topic aims to collect Original Research articles and Reviews on the molecular regulatory mechanism of extremophile adaptation to adverse environments, as well as the synthetic biological modification of extremophiles, and the production of high-value add-on products using enzymes from extremophiles. Particular sub-topics may include:

1. Extremophile isolation and its potential biotechnological applications

2. Study on microbial defense mechanism in extreme environment

3. Genome mining for the discovery of novel enzymes from extremophiles including bioinformatics predictions, and comprehensive analysis of the Meta-genomics, meta-transcriptomics, metabolomics, and meta-proteomics, etc.

4. Chassis modification of extremophiles, including the development of modification tools and methods, metabolic flow modification of microbial chassis cells, and morphological engineering modification.

Keywords: Extremophiles, Genome mining, Chassis modification, Synthetic Biology, Industrial Application

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.

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