caa a22 4500 386384703 CHVBK 20180307112055.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130s1989 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0263593300028704 doi S0263593300028704 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0263593300028704 Macdonald A. G. Department of Physiology, Marischal College, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB9 IAS, Scotland, U.K. Physiological adaptations to extreme pressures: the implications for palaeoecology [Elektronische Daten] [A. G. Macdonald] Present-day organisms have colonised two distinct high pressure environments: the deep sea and oil well and other crustal fluids. In the former, pressures attain 100 MPa and temperatures are generally less than 4°C. In the latter, the temperatures are high, up to 150°C, and occur in combination with pressures of up to 50 MPa. The high temperature is close to the limit of thermal stability of the macromolecules essential for life. The adaptation of present-day marine organisms to high pressure is known to involve modifications to their cell membrane lipids and subtle changes in both structural proteins and enzymes. There is no reason to suppose that they are close to the maximum pressure to which they could adapt and higher pressures could have been colonised in the geological past. The existence of "marker” compounds, characteristic of high pressure organisms, is discussed, and the possibility that isotope ratios are distorted by metabolic processes at high pressure is raised. Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1989 deep sea animals nationallicence deep sea bacteria nationallicence high temperatures nationallicence homeoviscous adaptation of membranes nationallicence oil well bacteria nationallicence palaeoecological markers nationallicence protein adaptation nationallicence unsaturated lipids nationallicence Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences Royal Society of Edinburgh Scotland Foundation 80/3-4(1989), 263-270 0263-5933 80:3-4<263 1989 80 TRE https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263593300028704 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263593300028704 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Macdonald A. G. Department of Physiology, Marischal College, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB9 IAS, Scotland, U.K NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences Royal Society of Edinburgh Scotland Foundation 80/3-4(1989), 263-270 0263-5933 80:3-4<263 1989 80 TRE CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge