Diversity and Bioprospecting Potentials of Antarctic (Polar) Microbes

The polar cryosphere, which represents approximately 14% of Earth’s surface, is the region of the planet that surrounds its geographical poles, the North and South Poles. This region is dominated by Earth’s polar ice caps, the aquatic Arctic surrounded by land in the north and the frozen Antarctic continent surrounded by the Southern Ocean. Polar regions play a crucial role in regulating the climate system. In spite of the extremely cold climate in addition to varied topographies, the polar regions are teeming with excellent microbial life—the art of polar food webs. A diverse range of bacterial, archaea, and eukaryotic microbial communities along with viruses comprise the important components of the polar ecosystems. They are found in the range of habitats including subglacial lakes and cryoconite holes. Microbes, both prokaryotes and eukaryotes that are present in these environments, are largely different between the two poles. The resident microbiota of Arctic and Antarctic regions have a similarity of only 30%. About 78% of bacterial OTUs of surface water communities of the Southern Ocean and 70% of Arctic Ocean are unique to each pole. The microbial diversity in polar regions is greatly influenced by the temperature, light, wind, nutrients, and salinity depending on the site of sampling. In the last two decades, there are several novel microbial species reported from Arctic and Antarctic samples. The bioprospecting research on polar microbes especially bacteria, actinobacteria, and fungi revealed their potential for the production of antibiotics, enzymes, pigments and antifreeze proteins, etc. The diversity, ecological functions, and various bioprospecting potentials of microbes in the Antarctica will be discussed in detail in this chapter.