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Crystallographic studies on two hyperthermophilic enzymes
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While Aristotle cautioned “everything in moderation”, the Romans, known for
their eccentricities, coined the word “extremus”, the superlative of exter, “being on
the outside”. By the fifteenth century “extreme” had arrived to English, via Middle
French. At the beginning of the 21st century, we know that Earth contains
environmental extremes unimaginable to our ancestors of the 19th century. Even
more unimaginable to them would be the fact that there are organisms that live, and
grow, in these environmental extremes. R. D. MacElroy named these organisms
lovers (from the Greek “philos”), “extremophiles” as in “lovers of extreme
environments”.
The discovery of extremophiles has put vitality in the biotechnology
industry as this discipline has exploded in the past 20 years. Several reviews have
been published on extremophiles and an increasing number of meetings and
conferences are organised around the theme. Genomes of extremophiles have been
sequenced, patents have been filed and several funding programmes have been
launched namely the US National Science Foundation and NASA’s programmes in
“Life in Extreme Environments, Exobiology and Astrobiology”, and the European
Union’s “Biotechnology of Extremophiles” and “Extremophiles as Cell Factories”(...)
Descrição
Dissertation presented to obtain the Ph.D degree in Biochemistry
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Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica