Explore a Virtual Issue from GBE covering Genomic Innovations in Extremophiles as part of the 40th anniversary celebration.
Adaptation to extreme environments often involves the evolution of dramatic physiological changes. To better understand how organisms evolve these complex phenotypic changes, the repeatability and predictability of evolution, and possible constraints on adapting to an extreme environment, it is ...
Nonbiting midges (family Chironomidae) are found throughout the world in a diverse array of aquatic and terrestrial habitats, can often tolerate harsh conditions such as hypoxia or desiccation, and have consistently compact genomes. Yet we know little about the shared molecular basis for these ...
Tardigrades may be nature's ultimate survivors. While these tiny, nearly translucent animals are easily overlooked, they represent a diverse group that has successfully colonized freshwater, marine, and terrestrial environments on every continent, including Antarctica. Commonly known as “water ...
Tardigrada is an ecdysozoan lineage famed for its resilience. Tardigrades can tolerate high doses of radiation, low-oxygen environments, desiccation, and both high and low temperatures under a dormant state called “anhydrobiosis”, which is a reversible halt of metabolism upon almost complete ...
The sleeping chironomid Polypedilum vanderplanki is capable of anhydrobiosis, a striking example of adaptation to extreme desiccation. Tolerance to complete desiccation in this species is associated with emergence of multiple paralogs of protective genes. One of the gene families highly expressed ...
Interest and controversy surrounding the evolutionary origins of extremely halophilic Archaea has increased in recent years, due to the discovery and characterization of the Nanohaloarchaea and the Methanonatronarchaeia. Initial attempts in explaining the evolutionary placement of the two new ...
Lake Dali Nur, located in Inner Mongolia, North China, is alkaline, with Triplophysa dalaica one of the three fish species that not only survive, but thrive, in the lake. To investigate the presence of molecular mutations potentially responsible for this adaptation, the whole-genome sequence of the ...
Inorganic arsenic (As) is a toxic xenobiotic and carcinogen associated with severe health conditions. The urban population from the Atacama Desert in northern Chile was exposed to extremely high As levels (up to 600 µg/l) in drinking water between 1958 and 1971, leading to increased incidence of ...
Exiguobacterium and Psychrobacter are bacterial genera with several cold-adapted species. These extremophiles are commonly isolated from the same habitats in Earth’s cryosphere and have great ecological and biotechnological relevance. Thus, through comparative genomic analyses, it was possible to ...
Plants on serpentine soils provide extreme examples of adaptation to environment, and thus offer excellent models for the study of evolution at the molecular and genomic level. Serpentine outcrops are derived from ultramafic rock and have extremely low levels of essential plant nutrients (e.g., N, ...
Understanding microbial adaptation to environmental stressors is crucial for interpreting broader ecological patterns. In the most extreme hot and cold deserts, cryptic niche communities are thought to play key roles in ecosystem processes and represent excellent model systems for investigating ...
Halophilic microbes living in hypersaline environments must counteract the detrimental effects of low water activity and salt interference. Some halophilic prokaryotes equilibrate their intracellular osmotic strength with the extracellular milieu by importing inorganic solutes, mainly potassium. ...
Nuclear genome sequencing from extremophilic eukaryotes has revealed clues about the mechanisms of adaptation to extreme environments, but the functional consequences of extremophily on organellar genomes are unknown. To address this issue, we assembled the mitochondrial and plastid genomes from a ...
The high-altitude hypoxic environment represents one of the most extreme challenges for mammals. Previous studies of humans on the Tibetan plateau and in the Andes Mountains have identified statistical signatures of selection in different sets of loci. Here, we first measured the hemoglobin levels ...
H B Rappaport andAngela M Oliverio
Genome Biology and Evolution, Volume 16, Issue 8, August 2024, evae160, https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evae160
From hydrothermal vents, to glaciers, to deserts, research in extreme environments has reshaped our understanding of how and where life can persist. Contained within the genomes of extremophilic organisms are the blueprints for a toolkit to tackle the multitude of challenges of survival in inhospitable environments.
Adaptation to extreme environments often involves the evolution of dramatic physiological changes. To better understand how organisms evolve these complex phenotypic changes, the repeatability and predictability of evolution, and possible constraints on adapting to an extreme environment, it is ...
Nonbiting midges (family Chironomidae) are found throughout the world in a diverse array of aquatic and terrestrial habitats, can often tolerate harsh conditions such as hypoxia or desiccation, and have consistently compact genomes. Yet we know little about the shared molecular basis for these ...
Tardigrades may be nature's ultimate survivors. While these tiny, nearly translucent animals are easily overlooked, they represent a diverse group that has successfully colonized freshwater, marine, and terrestrial environments on every continent, including Antarctica. Commonly known as “water ...
Tardigrada is an ecdysozoan lineage famed for its resilience. Tardigrades can tolerate high doses of radiation, low-oxygen environments, desiccation, and both high and low temperatures under a dormant state called “anhydrobiosis”, which is a reversible halt of metabolism upon almost complete ...
The sleeping chironomid Polypedilum vanderplanki is capable of anhydrobiosis, a striking example of adaptation to extreme desiccation. Tolerance to complete desiccation in this species is associated with emergence of multiple paralogs of protective genes. One of the gene families highly expressed ...
Interest and controversy surrounding the evolutionary origins of extremely halophilic Archaea has increased in recent years, due to the discovery and characterization of the Nanohaloarchaea and the Methanonatronarchaeia. Initial attempts in explaining the evolutionary placement of the two new ...
Lake Dali Nur, located in Inner Mongolia, North China, is alkaline, with Triplophysa dalaica one of the three fish species that not only survive, but thrive, in the lake. To investigate the presence of molecular mutations potentially responsible for this adaptation, the whole-genome sequence of the ...
Inorganic arsenic (As) is a toxic xenobiotic and carcinogen associated with severe health conditions. The urban population from the Atacama Desert in northern Chile was exposed to extremely high As levels (up to 600 µg/l) in drinking water between 1958 and 1971, leading to increased incidence of ...
Exiguobacterium and Psychrobacter are bacterial genera with several cold-adapted species. These extremophiles are commonly isolated from the same habitats in Earth’s cryosphere and have great ecological and biotechnological relevance. Thus, through comparative genomic analyses, it was possible to ...
Plants on serpentine soils provide extreme examples of adaptation to environment, and thus offer excellent models for the study of evolution at the molecular and genomic level. Serpentine outcrops are derived from ultramafic rock and have extremely low levels of essential plant nutrients (e.g., N, ...
Understanding microbial adaptation to environmental stressors is crucial for interpreting broader ecological patterns. In the most extreme hot and cold deserts, cryptic niche communities are thought to play key roles in ecosystem processes and represent excellent model systems for investigating ...
Halophilic microbes living in hypersaline environments must counteract the detrimental effects of low water activity and salt interference. Some halophilic prokaryotes equilibrate their intracellular osmotic strength with the extracellular milieu by importing inorganic solutes, mainly potassium. ...
Nuclear genome sequencing from extremophilic eukaryotes has revealed clues about the mechanisms of adaptation to extreme environments, but the functional consequences of extremophily on organellar genomes are unknown. To address this issue, we assembled the mitochondrial and plastid genomes from a ...
The high-altitude hypoxic environment represents one of the most extreme challenges for mammals. Previous studies of humans on the Tibetan plateau and in the Andes Mountains have identified statistical signatures of selection in different sets of loci. Here, we first measured the hemoglobin levels ...
