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. © 2005 Sabehi et al.
CITATION STYLE
Sabehi, G., Loy, A., Jung, K. H., Partha, R., Spudich, J. L., Isaacson, T., … Béjà, O. (2005). New insights into metabolic properties of marine bacteria encoding proteorhodopsins. PLoS Biology, 3(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030273
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.