Primary Studies On Isolation And Polyphasic Taxonomy Of Some Bacteria In Extreme Environments

One of the most fascinating and attractive aspects of the microbial world is its extraordinary diversity17. Much more concerns on life exploration on Mars made me try to do something on it. Some geothermal sediment or salt soil samples from Tibet, Qinghai and Xingjiang, in china and desert salt soil from Egypt, were selected for investigation primarily. Some interesting resulted were made by traditional enrichment and isolation. After investigated by polyphasic taxonomy, some of the strains isolated here were identified. Three thermophilic strains, 60200, 60202 and 60203, from a geothermal spring in Tibet was identified as a new species of Thermus, designed Thermus naquensis sp. nov. Another thermophile 60201 was identified as Thermus scotoductos. Some evolutionary significance aspects of Thermus strain were also discussed. Two halophilic (or halo-tolerant), low G+C content strains were identified as new species; Halobacillus baicheng sp.nov. was proposed. One high G+C content, halophilic (or halo-tolerant) actinomycete strains was identified as Nocardiopsis exhalans. Because in the past few years we have come to realize that where there is liquid water on earth, virtually no matter what the physical conditions, there is life11. Here we also examined critically what it means to be an extremophiles, and the implication of this for evolution, biotechnology and specially the search for new bacteria and archaea species in the extreme environment in Tibet. And brief summary on systematic bacteriology and molecular ecology progresses recently were also made. It was concluded that this would be a fascinating and boundless field of the extremophiles exploiting inhabiting in the high-altitude-geothermal-salt ecosystem, since during the last decade much glorious works had been made by many geologists on geothermal spring and salt lakes in Tibet.