M jannaschii : biotech boon
The archaeon M jannaschii was originally isolated in 1983 by John Leigh (then at the University of Illinois; now at the University of Washington) from a sample collected from the hydrothermal vent 2,600 metres below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, approximately 100 miles south of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. This curious little organism, like most of its relatives, grows without oxygen at a temperature approaching the boiling point of water and at a pressure 500 times higher than the atmospheric pressure. It feeds on inorganic compounds like carbon dioxide (co2) and ammonia and in the process, generates energy by converting co2 and hydrogen into methane: in the jargon of microbiology, this microbe is anaerobic, thermophilic, autotrophic and methanogenic, respectively. About 500 species of archaea have been found so far.
Archaea seem to have much more to offer than just glimpses into the early history of life on earth. Being the first thermophile and the first autotroph to be sequenced fully, scientists believe that the genome of M jannaschii could yield considerable information with potential biotechnological applications. For example, it encodes the metabolism that produces methane, a well known renewable source of energy, popularly known as natural gas. Methane also contributes to global warming and ozone depletion, and a better understanding of methanogenic bacteria could be essential from the environmental and bioremediation point of view.
Being a thermophile, it also contains genes for hundreds of enzymes (potential industrial catalysts) that work at high temperatures, often preferred for chemical and pharmaceutical processes. Several other heat-resistant products may be obtained from archaea that could be useful as new detergent additives or stable enzymes for textile and chemical industries. The genomic sequence of M jannaschii also makes scientists believe that it may contain some genes that code for metal-binding proteins which transport toxic metals out of the cell, with potential applications for the concentration and clean-up of toxic wastes.