Unsuspected diversity among marine aerobic anoxygenic phototrophs

Oded Béjà, Marcelino T. Suzuki, John F. Heidelberg, William C. Nelson, Christina M. Preston, Tohru Hamada, Jonathan A. Eisen, Claire M. Fraser and Edward F. DeLong ()
Additional contact information
Oded Béjà: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Marcelino T. Suzuki: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
John F. Heidelberg: The Institute for Genomic Research
William C. Nelson: The Institute for Genomic Research
Christina M. Preston: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Tohru Hamada: Marine Biotechnology Institute, Kamaishi Laboratories
Jonathan A. Eisen: The Institute for Genomic Research
Claire M. Fraser: The Institute for Genomic Research
Edward F. DeLong: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Nature, 2002, vol. 415, issue 6872, 630-633

Abstract: Abstract Aerobic, anoxygenic, phototrophic bacteria containing bacteriochlorophyll a (Bchla) require oxygen for both growth and Bchla synthesis1,2,3,4,5,6. Recent reports suggest that these bacteria are widely distributed in marine plankton, and that they may account for up to 5% of surface ocean photosynthetic electron transport7 and 11% of the total microbial community8. Known planktonic anoxygenic phototrophs belong to only a few restricted groups within the Proteobacteria α-subclass. Here we report genomic analyses of the photosynthetic gene content and operon organization in naturally occurring marine bacteria. These photosynthetic gene clusters included some that most closely resembled those of Proteobacteria from the β-subclass, which have never before been observed in marine environments. Furthermore, these photosynthetic genes were broadly distributed in marine plankton, and actively expressed in neritic bacterioplankton assemblages, indicating that the newly identified phototrophs were photosynthetically competent. Our data demonstrate that planktonic bacterial assemblages are not simply composed of one uniform, widespread class of anoxygenic phototrophs, as previously proposed8; rather, these assemblages contain multiple, distantly related, photosynthetically active bacterial groups, including some unrelated to known and cultivated types.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/415630a Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:415:y:2002:i:6872:d:10.1038_415630a

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/415630a

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().