Extremophiles: Sustainable Resources and Biotechnological Implications

Many extremophilic bio-products are already used as life-saving drugs. Until recently, however, the difficulty of working with these microbes has discouraged efforts to develop extremophilic microbes as potential drug reservoirs of the future. Recent technological advances have opened the door to exploring these organisms anew as sources of products that might prove useful in clinical and environmental biotechnology and drug development.

Extremophiles features outstanding articles by expert scientists who shed light on broad-ranging areas of progress in the development of smart therapeutics for multiple disease types and products for industrial use. It bridges technological gaps, focusing on critical aspects of extremolytes and the mechanisms regulating their biosynthesis that are relevant to human health and bioenergy, including value-added products of commercial significance as well as other potentially viable products.

This groundbreaking guide:

• Introduces the variety of extremophiles and their extremolytes including extremozymes
• Provides an overview of the methodologies used to acquire extremophiles
• Reviews the literature on the diversity of extremophiles
• Offers tools and criteria for data interpretation of various extremolytes/extremozymes
• Discusses experimental design problems associated with extremophiles and their therapeutic implications
• Explores the challenges and possibilities of developing extremolytes for commercial purposes
• Explains the FDA's regulations on certain microbial bio-products that will be of interest to potential industrialists

Extremophiles is an immensely useful resource for graduate students and researchers in biotechnology, clinical biotechnology, microbiology, and applied microbiology.