Why in the News?
Researchers have isolated extremophile bacteria from harsh environments like volcanic vents, permafrost, acid mines, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and lakes beneath polar ice caps.
What are Extremophiles?
- Extremophiles are microorganisms that thrive in extreme environmental conditions where other life forms typically cannot survive.
- For example: Volcanic vents, Permafrost, Acid mines, Deep-sea hydrothermal vents, dark lakes buried beneath polar ice caps, on the exteriors of spacecraft, around nuclear waste storage sites.
Adaptation and Evolution:
- Extremophiles have developed unique biological and biochemical processes over millions of years to adapt to diverse habitats.
- Unlike more complex life forms, which have one set of proteins, extremophiles have multiple sets of proteins, each adapted to specific environmental conditions.
- These proteins are ‘activated’ based on the surrounding environment, enabling survival during extreme conditions like high temperatures, lack of water, or high acidity.
- Significance: Some scientists believe that life on Earth may have begun as an extremophile in extreme environmental niches before spreading and adapting to more temperate ecosystems.
About the ‘Earth Microbiome Project’
- It is a global initiative aimed at mapping, organising, and understanding the diversity of microbial life across different environmental niches on Earth.
- The project was founded in 2010.
- Objective:
- To sequence 200,000 genetic samples from diverse environments.
- To assemble 500,000 microbial genomes, creating a comprehensive map of microbial diversity on Earth.
- Significance:
- The project is part of broader efforts to understand the microbial world, which is still in its infancy.
- It is related to other significant projects like the ‘Earth Biogenome Project,’ which aims to sequence the genomes of all eukaryotic organisms on the planet.
- Understanding microbial diversity has numerous biological and industrial applications, such as developing new enzymes for molecular biology or finding new ways to adapt organisms to challenging environments.
|
PYQ:
[2017] With reference to agriculture in India, how can the technique of ‘genome sequencing’, often seen in the news, be used in the immediate future?
1. Genome sequencing can be used to identify genetic markers for disease resistance and drought tolerance in various crop plants.
2. This technique helps in reducing the time required to develop new varieties of crop plants.
3. It can be used to decipher the host-pathogen relationships in crops.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3 |
