The Research Center for Extreme Environments and Extremophiles (CUR-AEE E3) aims to:
• foster a fruitful and stable scientific collaboration between university teachers interested in the themes of the Center. Participation in the Center does not prejudice the belonging of teachers to the Departments to which they belong;
• promote scientific initiatives in the field of studying biological communities living in extreme environments and the potential of biotechnological biomolecules produced by extremophiles;
• encourage exchanges of professors, researchers and young graduates, establishing, through contracts and / or agreements, consultancy, collaborations, and exchanges with universities and research centers, Italian and foreign, with public or private international institutions, to deepen the subjects above, in compliance with the statutory and regulatory provisions of the University of Messina;
• propose national and international research projects, in collaboration with other research structures, of significant scientific value;
• contribute to the training activities of students, undergraduates, doctoral students and researchers and promote and manage completion and post-graduate training and / or refresher courses;
• organize conferences and seminars to promote scientific debate and allow the dissemination of research results, which may in any case be the subject of specific publications (monographs, collective works or essays in specialized journals);
• create a specialized documentation center, which can be a point of reference for scholars of the topics under consideration;
• foster the development of various forms of cooperation between universities and industries.
In addition to the exploration of biodiversity in extreme environments, the Centre E3 aims to exploit the biotechnological potential of extremophilic organisms and their products, in responding to the increasing demand of new active bioproducts in cosmetic, food, medical and pharmaceutical applications. Interdisciplinarity is the main characteristic of all the activities of the Center E3.
The Center E3 possesses a culture collection of extremophiles (including thermophiles, UV- resistant bacteria and halophiles) isolated from shallow hydrothermal vents in the Mediterranean Sea (Eolian Archipelago in Italy).