Functional enzyme diversity in a number of extreme and non-extreme environments

Abstract

The collaborative projects, MAMBA, MAGICPAH, ULIXES, funded by the EU FP7 program, and the BIO2011- 25012 (funded by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) are focused on using environmental sites around the Planet (including soils, acid mines, superficial and deep seawater, etc.) as resources of novel microbial assemblages, gene sequences and enzyme activities, some of which could have potential scientific and industrial applications. Some of the environments, that included contaminated and concontaminated sites, may be inhabited by extremophiles that contains “extremozymes”. The investigation of their “extremozymes”, and their new functions and protein folds, and the correlation between those characteristics and environmental constraints is of interest for achieving the full understating of extreme ecosystem functioning. Here, using cultivation-independent techniques, and in particular, metagenomics, we have selected and analyzed microbial communities from various extreme and non extreme environments and provided a draft vision into their enzyme properties.