Industrial and Medical Applications

Vents have excellent potential to solve pressing problems on the earth's surface. Vent organisms might someday clean up industrial pollution such as hydrogen sulfide, which is linked to acid rain, as well as sites contaminated with copper, cadmium and mercury. They may also help in the manufacture of new, heat-stable industrial chemicals. Methanogenic archaea could provide a renewable source of natural gas. Professor Robert M. Kelly of North Carolina State University suggests that extremozymes, or enzymes produced by heat-loving extremophiles, may make dry oil wells productive by thinning fuel now too thick for extraction.

Other uses are likely because such enzymes are expected to have a long shelf life, produce less waste, and have a lower risk of contamination since potential known contaminates will not survive the high heat. Moreover, they will be biodegradable and easily controlled simply by lowering or raising the temperature.

Medical researchers are working to discover new drugs derived from vents to combat germs now resistant to plant- and soil-based drugs. Giant tube worms may help us understand and combat deadly human iron deficiencies.

Enzymes from vent creatures have great potential in a variety of biochemical applications. Extremozymes will permit reactions to run hotter, faster and purer. Their use could improve polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a technique used to amplify and clone DNA; allow anaerobic bioremediation; and the production of a biocomputer chip. Eurythermal enzymes that function effectively in a wide range of temperatures could provide protein-based catalysts to break down fats, protein, and wood as well as DNA.