New Insights into Metabolic Properties of Marine Bacteria Encoding Proteorhodopsins
Open Access
- 19 July 2005
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Public Library of Science (PLoS) in PLoS Biology
- Vol. 3 (8) , e273
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030273
Abstract
Proteorhodopsin phototrophy was recently discovered in oceanic surface waters. In an effort to characterize uncultured proteorhodopsin-exploiting bacteria, large-insert bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) libraries from the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea were analyzed. Fifty-five BACs carried diverse proteorhodopsin genes, and we confirmed the function of five. We calculate that proteorhodopsin-exploiting bacteria account for 13% of microorganisms in the photic zone. We further show that some proteorhodopsin-containing bacteria possess a retinal biosynthetic pathway and a reverse sulfite reductase operon, employed by prokaryotes oxidizing sulfur compounds. Thus, these novel phototrophs are an unexpectedly large and metabolically diverse component of the marine microbial surface water.Keywords
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