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Life on the Edge and Astrobiology: Who Is Who in the Polyextremophiles World?

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Polyextremophiles

Part of the book series: Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology ((COLE,volume 27))

Abstract

Life exists in almost every ecological niche on Earth, and the majority of living organisms thrive in “normal” or “common” conditions. These are the environments that we are familiar with from our daily life. The organisms distributed under those conditions are at moderate temperature (5 to ~40 °C), 1 atm sea level pressure, with our known gas compositions, and oxygen rich atmosphere, close to neutral pH level. We consider these conditions as benign ambient habitats.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks his colleagues for reviewing parts of the manuscript and for suggesting constructive improvements to the above chapter. Among them are (in alphabetical order) Professors Aharon Oren (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel), Julian Chela-Flores (ICTP, Trieste IT), David Chapman (UCSB, USA), and Dr. Jean-Pierre de Vera (DLR-Berlin) and Professors Stephan Kempe (University Darmstadt, Germany), François Raulin (University of Paris), Dirk Schulze-Makuch (Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA), and Helga Stan-Lotter (University of Salzburg, AT). Last and most of all, the author expresses gratitude to his wife Fern Seckbach for her proofreading and spell checking of the original draft and improving previous chapters.

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  1. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Joseph Seckbach

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  1. The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Joseph Seckbach

  2. Dept. of Plant and Env. Sciences, Institute of Life Sciences The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Aharon Oren

  3. Dept. Mikrobiology, Universität Salzburg FB Molekulare Biologie, Salzburg, Austria

    Helga Stan-Lotter

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Seckbach, J. (2013). Life on the Edge and Astrobiology: Who Is Who in the Polyextremophiles World?. In: Seckbach, J., Oren, A., Stan-Lotter, H. (eds) Polyextremophiles. Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6488-0_2

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