Microbial Life in the Cold: A Focus on Extreme Aquatic Environments
A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Biodiversity and Functionality of Aquatic Ecosystems".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 December 2022) | Viewed by 8657
Special Issue Editors
Interests: Biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem functioning in polar environments; microbial ecology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: microbial ecology of polar environments; biotechnology of cold-adapted bacteria; bacterial associations with benthic filter feeders; relationships between prokaryotes and chemical contamination
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Low temperatures characterize, alone or in combination with other environmental factors (e.g. high salinity, osmotic pressure, low nutrient availability), most of the Earth biosphere, with repercussions on living organisms at different levels of the trophic web. Cold environments harbor a remarkably diverse range of liquid water habitats, including rivers, surface and subglacial lakes, sea-ice and lake brines, which are teeming with cold-adapted microbial life. The physical environment shapes the microbial communities by evolutionary adaptation and acclimation responses to long- and short-term variations. Raising temperatures and freezing-thawing phenomena (with their consequences) are among main environmental stressors acting on the microbiota in a global change scenario. With this Special Issue of Water we intend to explore the diversity and survival strategies of cold-adapted microorganisms (including bacteria, archaea, viruses, and eukaryotes), the ecological role played by the microbial communities in biogeochemical cycling (impacting community dynamics at seasonal and spatial scales), and the challenges for life encountered by microorganisms. Therefore, we are looking for experimental studies, reviews, and distributional surveys relating to any aspect of microbial diversity, including origin of life, ecology, astrobiology, molecular biology, physiology, and biotechnology, related to eukaryotes and prokaryotes in liquid cold matrices. Comparative studies on Arctic and Antarctic microbiology will be also welcome.
Dr. Maurizio Azzaro
Dr. Angelina Lo Giudice
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- polar environments
- cold habitats
- microbial ecology
- cold-adapted microbes
- biogeochemical cycling
- liquid matrices
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