Extremophiles and biotechnology: current uses and prospects

Biotechnology has almost unlimited potential to change our lives in very exciting ways. Many of the chemical reactions that produce these products can be fully optimized by performing them at extremes of temperature, pressure, salinity, and pH for efficient and cost-effective outcomes. Fortunately, there are many organisms (extremophiles) that thrive in extreme environments found in nature and offer an excellent source of replacement enzymes in lieu of mesophilic ones currently used in these processes. In this review, I discuss the current uses and some potential new applications of extremophiles and their products, including enzymes, in biotechnology.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  F1000Research

• Publication date

  2016-03-24

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Chemistry, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.12688/f1000research.7432.1PMID 27019700PMCID 4806705
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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