Microbiology of Extreme Enviornments - an open text book

Description

This repository contains the (still very early) draft of the open textbook Microbiology of Extreme Environments. The book is designed for non microbiology majors to provide an extensive overview of the main topics in the microibiology of our plkanet with a special focus on extreme environments. The content of this book comes from the master course "Microbiology of Extreme Enviornments" that I teach at the University of Naples Federico II (Italy) as parte of the Master Degree program "Biology of Extreme Environments". The book will eventually be a free online resource, a downloadable ebook (both in PDF and EPUB format) and a printed-on-demand soft cover book.

The need for the book comes from the lack of cohesive material on the subject that was explaining concept in a weay suited for an interfdisciplianry student base such as the one we have right now in our master program. Additionally, I wanted a book that was actiing as an introductory read pointing to relevant (and often more comprehensive) other resouces using an extended bibliography.

While I am listed as primary author of the book, my team at the Giovannelli Lab has (and still is) contributed significantly to the content of the book, and their names are listed as contributing authors on the contribution page of the book. The book has been designed to be a collaborative effert with my colleagues in the future, and I expect as soon as we are in v1.0 or above to open up pull requests to integrate new topics and chapters. For now any error, mistake and or suggestion can be submitted as an issues here on GitHub.

The book is released under Creative Commons licence CC-SA-NC 4.0. If you have copyright claims for any of the material on the book please open an issue or contact me directly. I am not hard to find online.

For more information about the research and activity of my group please visit www.donatogiovannelli.com or www.coevolve.eu.

Book content:

• MICROBIOLOGY BASICS

  1. A brief history of (environmental) microbiology
  2. The microbial cell
  3. Viruses
  4. Microbial genetics: genes and genomes
  5. Microbial metabolism: the basics
  6. Microbial evolution
  7. Microbial ecology
  8. Studing microbial diversity: an overview

• MICROBIAL METABOLISM

  10. Microbial energetic metabolism 101
  11. Themodynamic and kinetic
  12. Photorophy: energy from the Sun
  13. Chemolithotrophy: energy from the Earth
  14. Carbon fixation: making biomass
  15. Chemoheterotrophy: energy from others

• MICROBIAL DIVERSITY

  16. Extremophiles and Life's extremes
  17. Polyextremophiles: the norm rather than the exception
  18. Psychrophiles
  19. Thermophiles and hyperthermophiles
  20. Acidophiles
  21. Alkaliphiles
  22. Halophiles
  23. Piezophiles
  24. Xerophiles
  25. Other adaptations: metals, hydrocarbons, radiation, etc...

• EXTREME ENVIRONMENTS

  26. Extreme environments on our planet
  27. Oceans
  28. Marine sediments
  29. Deep-sea hydrothemal vents
  30. Cold seeps and mud volcanoes
  31. Oxygen minimum zones
  32. Deep hypersaline anoxic basins
  33. Whale falls and other massive organic falls
  34. Shallow water hydrothermal vents
  35. Marine polar regions
  36. Soils
  37. Hot springs and geothermal environments
  38. Serpentiniziong environments
  39. Subsurface ecosystems: oceanic and continental
  40. Alkaline and soda lakes
  41. Continental polar regions
  42. Ice and snow
  43. Atmosphere and aerosols

• A PLANETARY VIEW

  44. Biogeochemical cycles
  45. Coevolution of Geosphere and Biosphere
  46. Extremophiles contributions to society
  47. Life beyond Earh: Astrobiology
  48. Future research directions

IN DEPTH BOXES

Box 1. Ethics: sampling and patenting diveristy Box 2.

Credits

The original repository to start this book project was forked from Alessandro Cucci alessandro.cucci@gmail.com and released under MIT License.