[Psycrophilic organisms in snow and ice].
Psychrophilic and psycrotrophic organisms are important in global ecology as a large proportion of our planet is cold. Two-third of sea-water covering more than 70% of Earth is cold deep sea water with temperature around 2 degrees C, and more than 90% of freshwater is in polar ice-sheets and mountain glaciers. Though biological activity in snow and ice had been believed to be extremely limited, various specialized biotic communities were recently discovered at glaciers of various part of the world. The glacier is relatively simple and closed ecosystem with special biotic community containing various psychrophilic and psycrotrophic organisms. Since psychrophilic organisms was discovered in the deep ice-core recovered from the antarctic ice-sheet and a lake beneath it, snow and ice environments in Mars and Europa are attracting a great deal of scientific attention as possible extraterrestrial habitats of life. This paper briefly reviews the results of the studies on ecology of psychrophilic organisms living in snow and ice environments and their physiological and biochemical adaptation to low temperature.
Kohshima
S
S
Laboratory of Biology, Faculty of Bioscience and Biotechnology (c/o Fac. Science), Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. kohshima@bio.titech.ac.jp
D000864:Antarctic Regions; D001419:Bacteria / Q000737:chemistry / Q000145:classification*; D003081:Cold Climate; D018534:Earth, Planet; D018559:Exobiology; D005618:Fresh Water / Q000382:microbiology; D007053:Ice; D018538:Jupiter; D018535:Mars; D012623:Seawater / Q000382:microbiology; D012914:Snow; D014871:Water Microbiology
D007053:Ice