Strategies of adaptation to extreme conditions in aquatic microorganisms

Aquatic ecosystems include the two extremes: constant environmental conditions in the main bodies of water, and unstable fluctuating conditions in the shallow margins of the aquatic ecosystems. Aquatic microorganisms living in the main oceans can thus be characterized by a single prototype being moderately halophilic, psychrophilic, to some extreme barophilic and all must be oligotrophs managing to survive and multiply in extremely low nutrient concentrations. On the other hand those populating the shallow margins must be adapted to rapidly fluctuating environments and thus have multipotential metabolic patterns. Oscillatoria limnetica can serve as a model for this being capable of shifts from oxygenic to non-oxygenic photosynthesis, having multiple dark energy generating systems, fixing nitrogen anaerobically and capable of induction of resistance mechanisms to overcome oxygen toxicity.