Antarctic bacteria represent a reservoir of unexplored biodiversity, which, in turn, might be correlated to the synthesis of still undescribed bioactive molecules, such as antibiotics. In this work we have further characterized a panel of four marine Antarctic bacteria able to inhibit the growth of human opportunistic multiresistant pathogenic bacteria belonging to the Burkholderia cepacia comp...

Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Australian Antarctic Division, 203 Channel Highway, Kingston, Tas. 7050, Australia; Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 80, Hobart, Tas. 7001, Australia; Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Australian Antarctic Division, Australian Marine Mammal Cen...

This Fisheries Centre Research Report presents eleven papers that describe whole-ecosystem models of four Antarctic areas: the Antarctic Peninsula, Kerguelen Islands, Falkland Islands, and the Southern Plateau region, New Zealand. A mass-balance model, sources of data, and derivations of model parameters are detailed for each region. Dynamic simulation models for the Antarctic Peninsula and the...

Notothenioidei are typical Antarctic teleosts evolved to adapt to the very low temperatures of the Antarctic seas. Aim of the present paper is to investigate sequence and structure of C3, the third component of the complement system of the notothenioid Trematomus bernacchii and Chionodraco hamatus. We determined the complete nucleotide sequence of two C3 isoforms of T. bernacchii and a single C...

The Antarctic icefish Chaenocephalus aceratus lacks the globins common to most vertebrates, hemoglobin and myoglobin, but has retained neuroglobin in the brain. This conserved globin has been cloned, over-expressed and purified. To highlight similarities and differences, the structural features of the neuroglobin of this colourless-blooded fish were compared with those of the well characterised...

23 The Antarctic continent contains the majority of the global ice volume and plays an important 24 role in a changing climate. The nature and causes of Antarctic climate variability are, however, 25 poorly understood beyond interannual time scales due to the paucity of long, reliable 26 meteorological observations. This study analyzes decadal-interdecadal climate variability over 27 Antarctica...

We describe the application of molecular biological techniques to estimate eukaryotic diversity (primarily fungi, algae, and protists) in Antarctic soils across a latitudinal and environmental gradient between approximately 60 and 87 degrees S. The data were used to (i) test the hypothesis that diversity would decrease with increasing southerly latitude and environmental severity, as is general...

Human faecal waste has been discarded at inland Antarctic sites for over 100 years, but little is known about the long-term survival of faecal microorganisms in the Antarctic terrestrial environment or the environmental impact. This study identified viable faecal microorganisms in 30–40 year old human faeces sampled from the waste dump at Fossil Bluff Field Station, Alexander Island, Antarctic ...

Severe declines in megafauna worldwide illuminate the role of top predators in ecosystem structure. In the Antarctic, the Krill Surplus Hypothesis posits that the killing of more than 2 million large whales led to competitive release for smaller krill-eating species like the Antarctic minke whale. If true, the current size of the Antarctic minke whale population may be unusually high as an indi...