Biotechnology and genetics of extreme thermophiles

Our group uses thermophiles as models for the study of ancestral biological processes and as source of thermostable enzymes and selection platforms for the development of new tools for biotechnological applications. Our main laboratory model is Thermus thermophilus an extreme thermophilic bacterium that is easy to grow under laboratory conditions and amenable to genetic manipulation due to the presence of a highly efficient natural competence apparatus (NCA).

The main biological topics under study in our group during the last years are, mechanisms of horizontal gene transfer, defense mechanisms against the transfer and genome repair pathways and their reciprocal interactions (Fig. 1). The main defense systems we are currently studying are the Argonaute programmable nuclease, the DNA primase-polymerase Primpol, and the AddAB complex (equivalent to RecBCD).

The group is also interested in new biotechnological applications derived from the use of thermophiles. A major effort focuses on the discovery of thermostable enzymes and in the isolation of thermostable variants of enzymes that could better respond to the requirements for industrial biocatalysts or in other applications in the field of Molecular Biology, such as gene edition. For this, new multifunctional vectors are being developed which allow a more efficient identification of thermostable enzymes from metagenomic libraries or the thermo-selection of variants of enzymes of biotechnological interest in modified thermophile host strains.