Extreme stress resilience

Objectives
Extremophiles thrive in deep-sea hydrothermal vents under high pressure and temperature, saturated salt lakes, and polar icecaps. Many of these organisms are members of the third domain of life, the archaea. Although archaea contribute substantially to global carbon and energy cycles, they remain understudied because they are difficult to culture and manipulate genetically.

Central Questions
To address these questions, research in our group uses salt-adapted archaea to understand how these organisms grow in energy limited salt lakes while surviving cellular damage from heavy solar irradiation. Specifically, we use a systems biology approach to ask:

• Ho do archaea regulate the response to stress?
• How do transcription factors work together dynamically to regulate these responses?
• What are the molecular function and mechanisms of transcription factors in archaea?
• How do these molecular mechanisms evolve?

Background photo credit: Amy Schmid