REVIEW ARTICLE
Metal-Tolerant Thermophiles: From the Analysis of Resistance Mechanisms to their Biotechnological Exploitation
Giovanni Gallo, Rosanna Puopolo, Danila Limauro, Simonetta Bartolucci, Gabriella Fiorentino*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2018Volume: 12
First Page: 149
Last Page: 160
Publisher ID: TOBIOCJ-12-149
DOI: 10.2174/1874091X01812010149
Article History:
Received Date: 1/8/2018Revision Received Date: 19/10/2018
Acceptance Date: 22/10/2018
Electronic publication date: 22/11/2018
Collection year: 2018
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Extreme terrestrial and marine hot environments are excellent niches for specialized microorganisms belonging to the domains of Bacteria and Archaea; these microorganisms are considered extreme from an anthropocentric point of view because they are able to populate harsh habitats tolerating a variety of conditions, such as extreme temperature and/or pH, high metal concentration and/or salt; moreover, like all the microorganisms, they are also able to respond to sudden changes in the environmental conditions. Therefore, it is not surprising that they possess an extraordinary variety of dynamic and versatile mechanisms for facing different chemical and physical stresses. Such features have attracted scientists also considering an applicative point of view. In this review we will focus on the molecular mechanisms responsible for survival and adaptation of thermophiles to toxic metals, with particular emphasis on As(V), As(III), Cd(II), and on current biotechnologies for their detection, extraction and removal.
