Nitrogen metabolism in haloarchaea

The nitrogen cycle (N-cycle), principally supported by prokaryotes, involves different redox reactions mainly focused on assimilatory purposes or respiratory processes for energy conservation. As the N-cycle has important environmental implications, this biogeochemical cycle has become a major research topic during the last few years. However, although N-cycle metabolic pathways have been studied extensively in Bacteria or Eukarya, relatively little is known in the Archaea. Halophilic Archaea are the predominant microorganisms in hot and hypersaline environments such as salted lakes, hot springs or salted ponds. Consequently, the denitrifying haloarchaea that sustain the nitrogen cycle under these conditions have emerged as an important target for research aimed at understanding microbial life in these extreme environments. The haloarchaeon Haloferax mediterranei was isolated 20 years ago from Santa Pola salted ponds (Alicante, Spain). It was described as a denitrifier and it is also able to grow using NO3-, NO2- or NH4+ as inorganic nitrogen sources. This review summarizes the advances that have been made in understanding the N-cycle in halophilic archaea using Hfx mediterranei as a haloarchaeal model. The results obtained show that this microorganism could be very attractive for bioremediation applications in those areas where high salt, nitrate and nitrite concentrations are found in ground waters and soils.

Monitoring and Prevention the Smart Cities

Nowadays, the intensive use of Technology Information (TI) provide solutions to problems of the high population density, energy conservation and cities management. This produces a newest concept of the city, Smart City. But the inclusion of TI in the city brings associated new problems, specifically the generation of electromagnetic fields from the available and new technological infrastructures installed in the city that did not exist before. This new scenario produces a negative effect on a particular group of the society, as are the group of persons with electromagnetic hypersensitivity pathology. In this work we propose a system that would allow you to detect and prevent the continuous exposure to such electromagnetic fields, without the need to include more devices or infrastructure which would only worsen these effects. Through the use of the architecture itself and Smart City services, it is possible to infer the necessary knowledge to know the situation of the EMF radiation and thus allow users to avoid the areas of greatest conflict. This knowledge, not only allows us to get EMF current map of the city, but also allows you to generate predictions and detect future risk situations.