Living with salt: metabolic and phylogenetic diversity of archaea inhabiting saline ecosystems

Abstract

Archaea that live at high salt concentrations are a phylogenetically diverse group of microorganisms. They include the heterotrophic haloarchaea (class Halobacteria) and some methanogenic Archaea, and they inhabit both oxic and anoxic environments. In spite of their common hypersaline environment, halophilic archaea are surprisingly diverse in their nutritional demands, range of carbon sources degraded (including hydrocarbons and aromatic compounds) and metabolic pathways. The recent discovery of a new group of extremely halophilic Euryarchaeota, the yet uncultured Nanohaloarchaea, shows that the archaeal diversity and metabolic variability in hypersaline environments is higher than hitherto estimated.