It is over a year since the team of the Extremophilic Bacteria Laboratory, Institute of Microbiology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, started work on the project D03-100 “Biodiversity and biotechnological potential of Archaea from Bulgarian hot springs”, funded by the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area, "Projects for inter-institutional cooperation" measure.
Within this project, a young scientist has worked for six months in the Laboratory of Prof. Birkeland, Department of Biology and Centre for Geobiology,UniversityofBergen,Bergen,Norway, and transferred the experience of Norwegian scientists on cultivation of thermophilic anaerobic Archaea. Archaea is the most recent (discovered in 1977) and the least studied kingdom among the three Kingdoms of life, Eukaryotes, Bacteria and Archaea. About 300 species are described so far, but the actual numbers of Archaea species are suggested to be several tens of thousands. The main reason for this slow accumulation of information on Archaea is their difficult cultivation related to their specific growth requirements and unknown metabolic features. Representatives of Archaea are ubiquitous in the most extreme niches such ashot springswhere they dominate.Bulgariais a country rich inhot springs, some of them with temperatures close to water boiling temperature.
The Extremophilic Bacteria Laboratory is the first and still the only one inBulgariaworking on characterization of thermophilic diversity. The current project enables Bulgarian scientists to explore new Archaea species and substances with new properties synthesized by them.
On September 26th and 27th 2016, an International Conference “Diversity and biotechnological potential of extremophiles” was organized as a part of the project performance. Leading scientists from eight European countries (Germany, England, Norway, Italy, Russia, Sweden, Armenia and Romania) were invited as lecturers. Three of them are members of the Organizing committee of the International Congress on Extremophiles, 2016, Kyoto, Japan (Peter Schonheit, Germany; Nils-Kare Birkelans, Norway; Elizaveta Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Russia). Elizaveta Bonch-Osmolovskaya was awarded the Bergey Award this year. This conference was the first meeting in Bulgaria of scientists working in the field of extremophilicity. It gave a chance for Bulgarian scientists to meet world famous scientists working in the field and provided an opportunity for future collaborations with European teams.