India will soon get its first Deep Sea Marine Microbial Repository to study micro-organisms found in extreme marine environments, which is taking shape at a seafront campus of the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) in Andhra Pradesh. This state-of-the-art facility will allow scientists to study, isolate and culture microbes for industrial, biomedical, and environmental applications.
The repository at Nellore will have all the cutting-edge equipment and cryo-freezers to study and store microbes isolated from different deep-sea environments.
Deep-sea microbes are primitive forms of life which live under high hydrostatic pressure, low temperature, and sustain life without sunlight.
"Due to their unique adaptation, they are capable of producing a wide range of novel molecules which will be of medical, industrial and environmental importance," NIOT Director Balaji Ramakrishnan said during his recent visit to Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and added, "We will study and document the microbes and offer it to researchers and start-ups to develop commercial products."
The deep-sea bacteria thrive in high-pressure deep-sea environments and cannot tolerate a drastic change in pressure.
NIOT researchers have so far catalogued over 1,000 promising strains through expeditions in the Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. Some documented strains have already found commercial and scientific applications.
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