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Physiological adaptations to extreme pressures: the implications for palaeoecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

A. G. Macdonald
A. G. Macdonald
Affiliation:
Department of Physiology, Marischal College,University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB9 IAS, Scotland, U.K.
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Abstract

Present-day organisms have colonised two distinct high pressure environments: the deep sea and oil well and other crustal fluids. In the former, pressures attain 100 MPa and temperatures are generally less than 4°C. In the latter, the temperatures are high, up to 150°C, and occur in combination with pressures of up to 50 MPa. The high temperature is close to the limit of thermal stability of the macromolecules essential for life. The adaptation of present-day marine organisms to high pressure is known to involve modifications to their cell membrane lipids and subtle changes in both structural proteins and enzymes. There is no reason to suppose that they are close to the maximum pressure to which they could adapt and higher pressures could have been colonised in the geological past. The existence of “marker” compounds, characteristic of high pressure organisms, is discussed, and the possibility that isotope ratios are distorted by metabolic processes at high pressure is raised.

Keywords

deep sea animalsdeep sea bacteriahigh temperatureshomeoviscous adaptation of membranesoil well bacteriapalaeoecological markersprotein adaptationunsaturated lipids
Type
Physiological adaptations in some recent and fossil organisms
Information
Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 80 , Issue 3-4: Environments and Physiology of Fossil Organisms , 1989 , pp. 263 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1989

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