A fundamental question in biology is how an organism's morphology and physiology are shaped by its environment. Here, we evaluate the effects of a hypersaline environment on the morphology and physiology of a population of livebearing fish in the genus Limia (Poeciliidae). We sampled from two populations of Limia perugiae (one freshwater and one hypersaline) in the southwest Dominican Republic....

Currently, several desalination facilities have been proposed to operate or are actually operating in California. These facilities' use of reverse osmosis (RO) may discharge hypersaline reject brine into the marine environment. The risks, if any, this brine would pose to coastal receiving waters are unknown. To test the toxicity of hypersaline brine in the absence of any additional toxic consti...

The environment significantly influences the dynamic expression and assembly of all components encoded in the genome of an organism into functional biological networks. We have constructed a model for this process in Halobacterium salinarum NRC-1 through the data-driven discovery of regulatory and functional interrelationships among approximately 80% of its genes and key abiotic factors in its ...

Halophiles are salt-loving organisms that inhabit hypersaline environments and are well equipped to balance the osmotic pressure of the environment and resist the denaturing effects of salts. Halophiles can be grouped as slightly, moderately or extremely halophilic, depending on their requirement for NaCl. Moderately halophilic bacteria are microorganisms able to grow optimally in media contain...

Intorduction Dead Sea is a hypersaline lake with 34% salinity, gains its name due to the absence of any living macroscopic creatures. Despite the extreme hypersaline environment, it is a unique ecosystem for various halophilic microorganisms adapted to this environment. Aims & Objectives Halophilic microorganisms are known for various potential biotechnological applications, the purpose of th...

Hypersaline close-to-saturation environments harbor an extremely high concentration of virus-like particles, but the number of haloviruses isolated so far is still very low. Haloviruses can be directly studied from natural samples by using different culture-independent techniques that include transmission electron microscopy, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, and different metagenomic approache...