Life

on the

Edge

Michael Gross:
Life on the Edge. Amazing Creatures Thriving in Extreme Environments
Hardback: Plenum, May 1998;
reprinted by Perseus Books August 1999, ISBN 0-306-45786-5, $ 25.95, 200 + xiii pp.
Paperback (with a new afterword): Perseus Books January 2001, ISBN 0-738-20445-5, $ 15.00, 210 + xiii pp.

Other books of related interest:

(newest first)

• "Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology: The Archaea, Cyanobacteria, Phototrophs, adn Deeply Branching Bacteria (2nd ed.)"
  by George Garrity
  Hb.: Springer April 2001, 560 pp, $ 105.00
  

 

• "Life at the Extremes: The Science of Survival"
  by Frances Ashcroft
  Univ. California Press October 2000, 320 pp, $ 27.50
  A physiologist's view of why human beings are not very good at coping with Everest or deep sea conditions.
• "Mapping the Deep: The extraordinary story of ocean science"
  by Robert Kunzig
  ppb.: Norton October 2000, 432 pp, $ 14.35
  
• "The Search for Life on Mars"
  by Malcolm Walter
  Ppb.: Perseus September 2000, 200 pp, $ 15.00
  
• "The Surprising Archaea: Discovering another Domain of Life"
  by John L. Howland
  Hb.: OUP February 2000, 204 pp, $ 29.95
  
• "Bacterial Stress Responses"
  by G. Storz, R. Hengge-Aronis (Eds.)
  American Society for Microbiology 2000, 485 pp, $ 109.95
  Monograph on stress response in bacteria, including pathogenic ones.
• "The ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents"
  by Cindy Lee van Dover
  Princeton, March 2000, 352 pp., $ 31.60
  The first textbook on Black Smoker communities. The author has visited the sea floor many times, both as an oceanographer and as Alvin's first and only female pilot.
• "The Eternal Darkness": A Personal History of Deep-Sea Exploration
  by Robert D. Ballard
  Princeton Univ.Press 2000, 368 pp, $ 29.95
  Latest in a series of deep sea books by the guy who found the Titanic.

 

• "Carl Sagan: A life in the cosmos"
  by William Poundstone
  Henry Holt & Co., 1999
• "Life Without Light": A Journey to the Earth's Dark Ecosystems
  by Melissa Stewart
  Franklin Watts Inc., 1999, 144 pp, $ 9.95
• "Enigmatic microorganisms and life in extreme environments: Cellular origin and life in extreme habitats"
  by Joseph Seckbach (ed.)
  Kluwer Academic, 1999, 700 pp., $ 360,-
  Academic monograph -- hard science.


• "Cold-adapted organisms: Ecology, Physiology ..."
  by R. Margesin and F. Schindler (eds.)
  Springer, 1999, $ 239.00 .
  Academic monograph -- hard science.


• "Dark Life"
  by Michael Ray Taylor
  Scribner, 1999
  Life in caves ...

 

• "The Deep Hot Biosphere"
  by Thomas Gold
  Copernicus, 1998
  According to Gold, oil does not originate from plants, and if it contains traces of biological origins, these come from bacteria living very deep and very hot indeed. See Nature 401, p.644 for a review.
• "Extremophiles: Microbial Life in Extreme Environments"
  by K. Horikoshi, W. D. Grant (eds.)
  Wiley, 1998, $ 144.50
  Academic monograph -- hard science.

 

• "Deep-ocean journeys: Discovering new life at the bottom of the sea"
  by Cindy Lee van Dover
  Perseus, 1997
  Impressions from 4 km below, but not diving too deeply into the science of it all, so the book can be read like an adventure / travel account by all. The author has visited the sea floor both as an oceanographer and as Alvin's first and only female pilot many times.



 

• "The outer reaches of life"
  by John Postgate
  Cambridge University Press, 1994

External links related to Life on the Edge

Extremophiles and extreme environments ...

• Yellowstone National Park
• Molecular Biology of Extremophiles (Universite Paris-Sud, Orsay)
• Centre for Extremophile research, University of Bath
• Brave New Biosphere (the "Why Files", University of Wisconsin)
• Extreme environments (NASA site)
• Voyage to the Deep
• Extremophiles (article from Scientific American, April 1997)
• K.O. Stetter (chair of microbiology & archaea research centre, Regensburg, FRG)
• Reinhard Rachel (Regensburg)
• TU Hamburg Harburg, Extremophile Mikroorganismen
• Extremophiles (journal)

... and bugs more generally:

• The E. coli Index
• The Microbe Zoo (educational site for learners aged 7 to 107)
• ImageQuest3D - stunning pix of marine life
• Society for General Microbiology

Stress response

• Cell Stress Society International

Applications in Biotech

• report on enzymes from extremophiles
• Diversa corporation (company mining biodiversity for enzymes with unusual properties)
• StressGen (company developing cancer vaccines based on heat shock proteins)

Life on other planets?

• NASA's Origins program
• Mars Pathfinder
• Mars Global Surveyor
• Life on Mars
• Mars volatiles and climate surveyor
• Kepler (search for habitable planets)
• Cassini mission for kids
• Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia
• The Haughton-Mars Project (Dress rehearsal for life on Mars, carried out at Haughton Impact Crater, Devon Island, Canada)

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last update:

17.02.2003