Question

Archaea often grow naturally in extreme environments. Those called extreme thermophiles thrive in hot springs and in high temperature hydrothermal vents in the ocean. Invent a culturing technique you could use that would be selective for these organisms.

Answer 1

Archaea has unique feature that allow them to survive in extremely adverse conditions like very high temperature. Certain enzymes act efficiently at high temperature present in these organisms, which allow them to survive in such situations and keep them alive. Similar conditions can be seeing in hot spring as well as in hydrothermal vent.

We can reconstruct similar conditions in the lab also by providing them similar temperature, pressure and other factors, which are required for their growth inside the lab. The selection range may vary in terms of temperature as it start from seventy degree C to ~120 ^oC in the TBS broth or TBS agar plate (0.1% in most of the cases) along with essential nutrient. Selection factor would be temperature, as organism will not grow at less than 70^oC or over 120^oC.