Organisms: Radiation-Resistant Extremophiles and Their Potential in Biotechnology

The bear have evolved along time ago and now there is only eight species existing. They evolved from early canids during the late Oligocene and early Miocene, about 25 million years ago. The earliest ancestors where the Dormaalocyon Latouri. An intermediate ancestor was the short faced bear, very similar to the modern day bear. It lived through the pleistocene period. It grew to thirteen feet long and was a herbivore. The ancestors to the modern day bears lived in the same climate and ate the same things. The modern bear contrast from the ancestor because the ancestor was more skinny and was smaller, and it was more cat like. The eight species of bear that still exist. They are the Polar bear, Brown bear, American black bear, Asian

UV radiation, such as that from the sun can be very harmful. It has been shown to cause many different mutations within cells, leading to issues for the organism such as death or disease. One of the most prevalent sources of UV radiation for humans is the sun. It’s very important for us to know the extent of cellular damage that can be caused by this radiation, as to know how harmful the sun’s rays are to us as humans. One way that the damage caused by the suns radiation can be tested is through the model organism yeast. For this lab, we exposed two different strains of yeast to UV radiation to test its affects. One strain was able to self-repair, while one was genetically altered so that it could not. Observations were recorded at

The water bears live all over the world from the deepest sea to the Himalayas. Most of the water bears live in fresh water, often in wet or moist habitats that are subject to frequent periods of drying and then rewetting such as the moss on a roof or algae in the gutters. Other areas include hot springs, glaciers, lichens, leaf-litters. Their ability to form a “tun” allows them to be blown around the world by the wind. The water bears enter a cryptobiotic phase in environments with intermittent moisture that allows them to survive conditions such as drought, low oxygen, salinity changes, or extreme temperatures.

These organisms use several adaptations in order to survive high temperatures. They are prokaryotes, which more easily adapt to extreme temperatures than eukaryotes. They use salts such as potassium and magnesium to protect their DNA from degradation, and they generate special polyamines that help to protect the proteins in their DNA from being degraded in high temperatures. One adaptation that thermophilic archaea have that helps them to survive high temperatures is ether bonds in their cell membranes, which are more stable than bonds found in many other

Radiation is one of the most potent mass killers, “You would be very, very lucky to walk away” from a dose of 5 grays, Sloan said. Tardigrades are almost guaranteed to survive 6000-7000 grays of radiation, this means that Tardigrades can survive even inside nuclear power plants. The Tardigrade’s resilience to radiation is one of the key defense systems it has and one of the essential reasons that is survived all of the mass extinction events.

Potential extinction that the tardigrade may face would most likely hinge on the fact that it takes time for them to enter into cryobiosis. While in its active metabolic state they are much more vulnerable to all outside conditions. Even in a more vulnerable state it would most likely take another mass extinction event for tardigrade to become extinct, and even then those that were at the time in cryobiosis would likely still survive. The only definitive way to kill the water bear would be if there was no longer any water on earth. While we know they can stay in stasis for decades we do not know if there comes a time that they will no longer be viable and be able to

withstand extreme desiccation. When the water bear is hydrated it makes tons of proteins and

If the bear has low water in the blood the hypothalamus is triggered and this sends messages to the pituitary glands to release ADH, which is a hormone that determines the concentration of the urine, when released this hormone reabsorbs water from the urine. If there is too much water in the body then the production of ADH slows down and can even stop to help reduce the amount of water that is being absorbed. A polar bear can also obtain water by eating different food sources, for example a polar bear needs a high in fat diet, this is because it’s the chemical reaction which allows the body to absorb the water from the food source, that’s why they eat large animals like seals. The blubber of the seal is high in fat which means the body is able to absorb lots of water from it.  Polar bears are able to gain water from eating the snow, however, this is an expensive process for the bear as it takes to much energy to break down the snow enough to get the water from

Although high/low temperature can be considerate an extreme condition, this is not the only factor that defines an extreme environment. It includes parameters such physical parameters (e.g., pressure, temperature and radiation) and geochemical parameters (e.g., pH and salinity). The natural or virtual arrangements of maximum or minimum values of these parameters (pH lower than 3, hydrostatic pressure above 20 MPa, temperature above 80°C, etc.), are challenging on development and survival of most life forms, denominate an extreme environment

Hypersaline environments constitute typical examples of environments with extreme conditions due to their high salinity, exposure to high and low temperatures, low oxygen conditions and in some cases, high pH values. Bacteria and Archaea are the most widely distributed organisms in these

While thermal vents and hot springs are considered to be some of the most extreme environments on Earth, several organisms are able to thrive in these hostile locations where most life would perish. Among these are thermophiles and hyperthermophiles. While the two share similar adaptations to survive in these extremes, they differ in their temperature growth optimum. Hyperthermophiles can grow optimally up to 105°C, whereas thermophiles are classified as growing between 50°C and 70°C. At such extreme temperatures, proteins lacking the necessary adaptations undergo irreversible unfolding, exposing the hydrophobic cores, which causes aggregation . Thermophilic proteins have several adaptations that give the protein the ability

If food irradiation technology is used to preserve food, and extends their shelf life by killing harmful bacteria’s, insects, parasites, and viruses, then many phases of mitotic activity within the cell will be stopped, because radiation may interrupt the cell division, by damaging their DNA, reducing the rate of growth within the cell, which would result in cells failure to pass regulations of the cell cycle.

Geothermal hot springs are naturally occurring geological phenomena widespread on Earth’s surface (Kormas et al., 2009). Environmental conditions for each geothermal hot spring can vary widely, even between neighboring sites (Oliver et al., 2011). Differences can be observed, for example, in chemical composition of spring water, ranges in temperature and pH, and levels of salinity and other mineral deposits (Jones and Renaut, 2013). According to Stan-Lotter et al. (eds.), “They [geothermal hot springs] can be regarded as islands, ecologically separated by large distances and physiochemical dispersal barriers” (p. 37). A combination of these factors help make geothermal hot springs unique as microbial habitats. However, one overarching similarity among geothermal hot springs appears to be the pattern of organisms that tend to inhabit these sites: thermophilic microbes. Thermophilic microbes thrive at fairly high temperatures, with optimal growth ranging between 55 and 80 °C (Lopez et al., 2013). While several studies have recognized thermophilic microbes belonging to the Bacteria domain, and their respective viruses (Kormas et al., 2009; Grogan, 2013; Bhatia et al., 2015), much of the reviewed literature on hot-spring microbiota have focused particularly on the Archaea domain, and their respective viruses, as they tend to dominate extreme thermal environments (Mochizuki et al., 2010; Pina et al., 2011; Bhatia et al., 2015; Snyder et al., 2015).

The purpose of the two experiments was to determine the fundamental effects that temperature has on the growth and survival of bacteria. During the first experiment five different bacterial broth cultures of Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Enterococcus faecalis, Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus stearothermophilus were individually incubated at temperatures of 5, 25, 37, 45 and 55°C for one week in an aim to distinguish the effect temperature has on growth and survival of the five different species. After one week they were observed for distinguishable changes by the turbidity showing an indication of bacterial growth, or the clarity an indication of no survival.

The effect of environmental factors such as temperature, osmotic pressure, oxygen concentration and pH on microbial growth and survival