Deviating from this range causes enzyme activity to slow down and eventually stop. However, some organisms, like bacteria, thrive in extreme environments, such as hot springs or freezing polar waters.

The industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal, long regarded as a symbol of urban environmental neglect, is being reimagined through ...

Deviating from this range causes enzyme activity to slow down and eventually stop. However, some organisms, like bacteria, thrive in extreme environments, such as hot springs or freezing polar waters.

Its 10,000 hydrothermal features—steamy vents, sulfurous mud pots, hot springs—support a broad diversity of microbes. Among them, unusual creatures that microbiologists call extremophiles ...

The patents cover several areas including enzymes, anti-freeze proteins and bioremediation, and are derived from marine and hot-spring microbes, cold-water fish, mammals and plant extracts.

1 However, bacteria are picky eaters: They cannot take up large molecules such as proteins, which must be broken down into amino acids and smaller peptides by protease enzymes. Given this, scientists ...