title: Genes that move the window of viability of life: lessons from bacteria thriving at the cold extreme: mesophiles can be turned into extremophiles by substituting essential genes.
abstract: Whether occurrence of life at the physicochemical extremes results from the entire adaptation of organisms to such settings or it originates from the action of a few genes has been debated for a long time. Recent evidence suggests that a limited number of functions suffice to change the predilection of microorganisms for radically different environmental scenarios. For instance, expression of a few genes from cold-loving bacteria in mesophilic hosts allows them to grow at much lower temperatures and become heat-sensitive. This has been exploited not only for constructing Escherichia coli strains able to grow at 5-10 °C (and thus optimised as hosts for heterologous gene expression) but also for designing vaccines based on temperature-sensitive pathogens. Occurrence of genes/functions that reframe the windows of viability may also ask for a revision of some concepts in microbial ecology and may provide new tools for engineering bacteria with a superior biotechnological performance.
authors.affiliation: Systems and Synthetic Biology Program, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología CSIC Cantoblanco, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Víctor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: de Lorenzo
mesh_terms: D001428:Bacterial Vaccines / Q000276:immunology; D003080:Cold Temperature; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics*; D015964:Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial / Q000502:physiology; D020043:Genes, Essential / Q000502:physiology; D005818:Genetic Engineering; D050296:Microbial Viability; D008829:Microbiology / Q000639:trends; D016254:Mutagenesis, Insertional / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D001428:Bacterial Vaccines