The discoveries of “extremophilic” microbes that thrive under extreme conditions of temperature, pressure, salinity, pH, etc. raise many questions of how life can exist under such conditions, including how the structure of the macromolecules composing these organisms can be maintained under conditions that would destroy their counterparts from mesophiles. Two limits for these conditions are important: the limits of survival, where microbes can survive and grow when conditions become more hospitable, and the limits of growth, where active microbial communities can grow and flourish. For the proteins inside the microbe, the two important questions relevant to each limit are how protein structure can be maintained and how protein function can be maintained, respectively. Here, molecular dynamics simulations provide a key link in understanding experimental data on how piezophiles protect  both structure and function of proteins under pressure.

Extreme biology and molecular dynamics simulations: Proteins under pressure

251st National Meeting (2016)

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