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To find life outside of Earth, we need to know under what sort of extreme conditions organisms are still able to thrive. When it comes to halophilic archaea, James Coker and Aida Moran-Reyna have now shown the effects of extreme pH levels on the archaea’s transcriptome. Coker shares more about the research in the interview below, and explains why he chose F1000Research to publish this exciting study.

 

Can you tell us briefly what your article is about?

Our article describes the first characterization of the changes in the transcriptome of the halophilic archaea resulting from growth in extremes of acidic and alkaline pH. This is important as pH is the only naturally occurring stress faced by the halophilic archaea whose response has yet to be characterized. Quite interestingly, our data shows that specific paralogous genes within the halophilic archaea may be responsible for coordinating the response to stress associated with growing at extremes of pH.

 

What does this discovery mean for researchers who are studying the development of life under extreme conditions?

As a result of our study there is now a more complete body of evidence that can be used to determine how the archaea have adapted to life in polyextremophilic conditions including acidic and alkaline saline lakes. Since liquid water is a necessary component for all life and extraterrestrial bodies are usually very cold it is likely that water present in the Universe (not including Earth) would have to be very saline to support life. Therefore, our results are also very relevant to the field of Astrobiology and the search for life in the Universe.

 

How did you experience the peer review process at F1000Research?

Without being too hyperbolic, I can say that the peer review process at F1000Research was amazing. I calculated that it took about 7 weeks from clicking ‘submit manuscript’ the first time to getting an approved version of an indexed paper. The peer review portion took about 3 weeks, which in my experience is incredibly fast, especially for having three reviewers. Never in my previous experiences as an author or reviewer has the time length for the peer review process been anywhere close to what I experienced at F1000Research. I would also like to say that the time length did not lower the quality of the reviewers’ comments as they were both insightful and very helpful at improving the quality of our manuscript.

 

What do you think of the F1000Research policy to include all underlying data with articles?

There are a lot of things I like about F1000Research but this one is near the top of the list. In my opinion the sharing of data is at the heart of good science. I also really like how F1000Research has harnessed the power of the Internet to allow for comments from the community on any paper. With the ability to read the hypotheses/ideas/concepts within the paper and also see all of the underlying data in the same place it makes it really easy to have an open, honest dialog about the work. In my opinion, this is one of the great ideas behind the F1000Research publishing model.

 

Your article is now indexed, but are you planning to submit a new version of your article to address the referees’ questions?

Of course. We have already done this. [Editor’s note: the newest version went up on August 29]. I think that if we did not do this it would be the equivalent of wasting the reviewers’ time and efforts. Their comments were of great help so of course we incorporated them as much as possible into the current version.

 

Would you submit to F1000Research again in the future?

Yes, I absolutely will and it will probably be before the end of the year.