Life in Extreme Environments

Access to glacial and subglacial environments in the Solar System by melting probe technology.- Exploration of Ellsworth Subglacial Lake: a concept paper on the development, organisation and execution of an experiment to explore, measure and sample the environment of a West Antarctic subglacial lake.- Thermostable proteins as probe for the design of advanced fluorescence biosensors.- Astrobiological significance of minerals on Mars surface environment.- Industrial barrens: extreme habitats created by non-ferrous metallurgy.- Viruses in extreme environments.- Microbial ecology of submerged marine caves and holes characterized by high levels of hydrogen sulphide.- Extremely halophilic archaea and the issue of long-term microbial survival.- Planktonic microbial assemblages and the potential effects of metazooplankton predation on the food web of lakes from the maritime Antarctica and sub-Antarctic islands.- Fungi in Antarctica.- Ecology and molecular adaptations of the halophilic black yeast Hortaea werneckii.- Ultraviolet radiation shapes seaweed communities.- Life strategy, ecophysiology and ecology of seaweeds in polar waters.- Life expansion in Sørkapp Land, Spitsbergen, under the current climate warming.- Some views on plants in polar and alpine regions.- Desiccation-tolerant plants in dry environments.- Energy dependant plant stress acclimation.- Post-capture investigations of hydrothermal vent macro-invertebrates to study adaptations to extreme environments.- Adaptations to hypoxia in hydrothermal-vent and cold-seep invertebrates.- How does the annelid Alvinella pompejana deal with an extreme hydrothermal environment?.- Pressure and life: some biological strategies.- Molecular evolution of haemoglobins of polar fishes.- Metal detoxification and homeostasis inAntarctic Notothenioids. A comparative survey on evolution, expression and functional properties of fish and mammal metallothioneins.- Predicting the impacts of climate change on the evolutionary adaptations of polar fish.- Human challenges in polar and space environments.- Hypometabolic induced state: a potential tool in biomedicine and space exploration.- A proposed classification of environmental adaptation: the example of high altitude.- The challenge of the food sufficiency through salt tolerant crops.