STM Article Repository

Achaea constitute a considerable fraction of the prokaryotes which colonize marine and terrestrial ecosystem especially in the extreme environments. These microorganisms play crucial roles and contribute significant impacts on global energy cycles. In fact, the extremophilic characteristics acquired by many archaeans display unusual properties of adaptations to extreme conditions which make them a potentially valuable resource in exploring new biotechnological processes and a wide range of industrial applications. In this review, the role of archaea domain as biocatalysts in environmental biotechnology and industrial applications were summarized and discussed. This review has been categories into three main sections, (a) archaeal characteristics and their extremozymes (b) environmental biotechnology that covers on bioremediation, hydrocarbon biodegradation and biomining (c) industrial applications, which discusses on the production of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), biosurfactant, and antibiotic produced by archaea domain.