Journal of Earth Science & Climatic Change
Open Access

Abstract

Microorganisms belonging to the archaea domain constitute a major part of microbial populations in many types of very hostile environments. As a result, they play a crucial role in regulating global budgets of atmospheric gases in such environments. Archaeal methane production and consumption have received substantial investigation; however the knowledge on archaeal denitrification and NOX gases production is still poor. This work summarizes the current understanding of denitrification in the archaea domain. The denitrification pathway is influenced by the specific growth conditions including nitrate and nitrite concentrations, pH and oxygen supply being the last one the dominant controlling factor. Although the denitrifying ability has been found in microorganisms belonging to bacteria and archaea domains, the genes encoding the denitrifying reductases specifically nitrate and nitrite respiratory reductases have been studied in few species. In the archaea domain, where it is found among the halophilic and hyper thermophilic microorganisms, only there are biochemical studies related to nitrate and nitrite reductases in Haloferax mediterranei, Haloarcula marismortui, Haloferax denitrificans and Pyrobaculum aerophilum at the time of writing this abstract. Regarding to nitric and nitrous oxide reductases little is known about their genetics, regulation and enzymology compared to bacteria domain. However, the increasing number of genome sequencing projects has allowed us to analyze the genetics of denitrifying process. In the present study, we show the nos and nor genes organization using the available genomes from Halolex and NCBI databases.

Biography

Rosa Maria Martínez-Espinosa completed her PhD in 2003 from University of Alicante, Spain and Postdoctoral studies from University of East Anglia, (UK) between 2004 and 2008. She is member of the Biotechnology of Extremophilic Microorganisms research group at the University of Alicante. She is also In charge of in-company internships and mobility coordination at the Faculty of Sciences in the same University. She has published more than 35 papers in reputed journals focused on N-cycle in Archaea. She has also been involved in the organization of different meetings and congresses on the same subject.