Opening the Black Box of Thermophilic Autotrophic Bacterial Diversity

Abstract

Autotrophy is the ability of an organism to produce organic molecules using inorganic compounds as “fuel.” The most common pathway described for carbon assimilation in these organisms is the reductive pentose phosphate cycle (PPC), which is also known as the Calvin–Benson cycle. Although the PPC has been well studied due to its importance and abundance in nature, at least five other carbon fixation pathways were discovered, which reflects the diversity of its hosts and the niches that they occupy, where certain pathways are more prevalent, for example, in thermophiles. Here we give an overview on known carbon fixation pathways and discuss some aspects of biotechnological applications of such metabolisms.