“Adaptions To High Hydrostatic Pressure” by George N. Somero talks about how living organisms adapt to extreme hydrostatic pressure found in the deep parts of the ocean. It focuses on the molecular and physiological mechanisms that allow living organisms to function in extreme environments and conditions. He compares the deep-sea organisms to shallow living species to identify “threshold pressures”. He talks about which enzymes, structural proteins, and membrane systems malfunction when under high water pressure. Somero demonstrates that some biological systems fail under such high pressures; specifically, dehydrogenases and adenylyl cyclase's fail at 50-100 atm and Na+/K+ -ATPase and actin assembly fail more towards 200 atm. He says that these thresholds explain species vertical distribution in the ocean and says that convergent evolution produces similar pressure-resistant adaptations across unrelated deep-sea lineages. This article also talks about how pressure and temperature affect the shaping of deep-sea biodiversity.

I chose this as my most reliable source because it gave me the most information about my specific research question. Although it is older it still helped me out the most when researching my topic. It covers essential information and background facts regarding my specific topic, being how water pressure affects deep-sea living organisms. It specifically discusses how the intense pressure affects the biological structure of sea-creature. I am going to use Somero’s article to dive deeper into how different deep-sea organisms adapt and arise through similar molecular changes.