Water is the most limiting factor in deserts, yet researchers have very different emphases on the relative importance of water, depending on the organisms that they study. For example, soil moisture is considered the most critical factor for recruitment of desert succulent plants, and numerous studies have linked plant distribution patterns with soil texture, rainfall, and soil moisture. By com...

ABSTRACT            Background and Objectives: Halophilic bacteria can grow and survive in environments with a wide range a wide range of salinities. In this study, we aimed to isolate halophilic bacteria from the Meyghan Lake in Arak (Iran) and evaluate their enzymatic activity.            Methods: Samples were taken from four different areas of the lake. Halophilic bacteria were isolated by...

Development of multi drug resistant organism has been high due to improper use of antibiotics. That made the necessity to develop new drug molecules. In this study an effort was made to find a new alternative. A wild type microorganism was isolated from soil and was identified as Bacillus and confirmed as Bacillus subtilis species by 16S r RNA sequencing. The strain was identified to have the a...

Chaotropic compounds that freely traverse biological membranes and do not affect turgor are powerful mediators of water stress. The present study was initiated to isolate, identify and characterize the Chaotrope tolerant bacteria from soil of Thar Desert. Bacteria were isolated from soil samples, collected from the surface of sand dunes, suspended in water contained 2.5 x 106 bacteria g-1 of so...

Amylases are one of the most important enzymes in present-day biotechnology. The objective of this study was to isolate and identify a potential thermophilic amylase producing bacterial strain from hot spring of Bakreswar village, Suri, West Bengal (India). Among the few isolated amylolytic strains on starch agar medium, the strain IB-A showed best amylase activity. Phylogenetic analysis based ...

BACKGROUND Bioethanol production from various starchy materials has received much attention in recent years. α-Amylases are key enzymes in the bioconversion process of starchy biomass to biofuels, food or other products. The properties of thermostability, pH stability, and Ca-independency are important in the development of such fermentation process. RESULTS A novel Flavobacteriaceae Sinomicr...

For centuries ecologists have studied how the diversity and functional traits of plant and animal communities vary across biomes. In contrast, we have only just begun exploring similar questions for soil microbial communities despite soil microbes being the dominant engines of biogeochemical cycles and a major pool of living biomass in terrestrial ecosystems. We used metagenomic sequencing to c...

Subfamily 37 of the glycoside hydrolase family GH13 was recently established on the basis of the discovery of a novel α-amylase, designated AmyP, from a marine metagenomic library. AmyP exhibits raw-starch-degrading activity and consists of an N-terminal catalytic domain and a C-terminal starch-binding domain. To understand this newest subfamily, we determined the crystal structure of the catal...

In arid ecosystems, variation in precipitation causes broad-scale spatial heterogeneity in soil moisture, but differences in soil texture, development, and plant cover can also create substantial local soil moisture heterogeneity. The boundary between inland desert sand dunes and adjacent desert habitats exhibits abrupt changes in soil and vegetation characteristics that may be associated with ...