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Albuquerque L,
Santos J,
Travassos P,
Nobre MF,
Rainey FA,
Wait R,
Empadinhas N,
Silva MT,
da Costa MS,
( 2002 ) Albidovulum inexpectatum gen. nov., sp. nov., a nonphotosynthetic and slightly thermophilic bacterium from a marine hot spring that is very closely related to members of the photosynthetic genus Rhodovulum. PMID : 12200275 : DOI : 10.1128/aem.68.9.4266-4273.2002 PMC : PMC124098 Abstract >>
Several bacterial isolates, with an optimum growth temperature of about 50 degrees C, were recovered from the marine hot spring at Ferraria on the island of S?o Miguel in the Azores. The geothermal water emerged from a porous lava flow and rapidly cooled in contact with seawater except at low tide. The bacterial species represented by strains FRR-10(T) and FRR-11 was nonpigmented, strictly aerobic, and organotrophic. Several genes, bchZ, pufB, pufA, pufL, or pufM, encoding the photosynthetic reaction center proteins and the core light-harvesting complexes were not detected in these strains. The organism oxidized thiosulfate to sulfate with enhancement of growth. The organism did not require additional NaCl in the culture medium for growth, but NaCl at 1.0% enhanced growth. Phylogenetic analyses using the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain FRR-10(T) indicated that the new organism represented a new species of the alpha-3 subclass of the Proteobacteria and that it branches within the species of the genus Rhodovulum. The contradiction of classifying an organism which branches within the radiation of the genus Rhodovulum but does not possess the hallmark characteristics of this genus is discussed. However, the absence of several of these characteristics, namely, the lack of photosynthesis and pigmentation, which could be related to colonization of dark environments, and growth at high temperatures, leads to our proposal that strains FRR-10(T) and FRR-11 should be classified as a new species of a novel genus, Albidovulum inexpectatum, representing, at present, the most thermophilic organism within the alpha-3 subclass of the Proteobacteria.
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Tsukatani Y,
Matsuura K,
Masuda S,
Shimada K,
Hiraishi A,
Nagashima KV,
( 2004 ) Phylogenetic distribution of unusual triheme to tetraheme cytochrome subunit in the reaction center complex of purple photosynthetic bacteria. PMID : 16228402 : DOI : 10.1023/B:PRES.0000011922.56394.92 Abstract >>
To understand the evolutionary relationship between triheme and tetraheme cytochrome subunits in the reaction center complex, genes located downstream of that coding for the M subunit of the reaction center complex (pufM) were amplified by PCR and analyzed in six established and two unidentified species of the genus Rhodovulum and five species of the genus Rhodobacter. All the Rhodovulum species tested had the pufC gene coding for the reaction-center-bound cytochrome subunit, while all the Rhodobacter species were found to have the pufX gene at the corresponding position. Analyses of the amino acid sequences of the pufC gene products showed that the cytochrome subunits of all the Rhodovulum species have three heme-binding-motifs and lack a methionine residue probably working as the sixth axial-ligand to one of the three hemes. Phylogenetic relationships among Rhodovulum species based on the pufC gene products were basically consistent with those based on 16S rRNA sequences, suggesting that the basic characteristics of the triheme cytochrome subunit have been conserved during the evolutionary process of the Rhodovulum species.
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