3. Biotechnology applications

Extremophiles represent a new frontier for biotechnology. Research into extremophiles is largely driven by existing biotechnological applications, and by those likely to be based on biomolecules with novel properties that could lead to the development of new products. Because of current practices in research laboratories and industry, it is often difficult to document the pathways leading from the (extremophilic) source to a product or process. Several thousand articles are devoted to this rapidly expanding field. This chapter can be approached from several angles:

• by groups of extremophiles;

• by type of industrial application ;

• by major enzyme and product families.

We have opted for this third approach.

Nevertheless,...