An Obligately Photosynthetic Bacterial Anaerobe from a Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent
The abundance of life on Earth is almost entirely due to biological photosynthesis, which depends on light energy. The source of light in natural habitats has heretofore been thought to be the sun, thus restricting photosynthesis to solar photic environments on the surface of the Earth. If photosynt...
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Published in | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 102; no. 26; pp. 9306 - 9310 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
National Academy of Sciences
28.06.2005
National Acad Sciences |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The abundance of life on Earth is almost entirely due to biological photosynthesis, which depends on light energy. The source of light in natural habitats has heretofore been thought to be the sun, thus restricting photosynthesis to solar photic environments on the surface of the Earth. If photosynthesis could take place in geothermally illuminated environments, it would increase the diversity of photosynthetic habitats both on Earth and on other worlds that have been proposed to possibly harbor life. Green sulfur bacteria are anaerobes that require light for growth by the oxidation of sulfur compounds to reduce CO2to organic carbon, and are capable of photosynthetic growth at extremely low light intensities. We describe the isolation and cultivation of a previously unknown green sulfur bacterial species from a deep-sea hydrothermal vent, where the only source of light is geothermal radiation that includes wavelengths absorbed by photosynthetic pigments of this organism. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jbeatty@interchange.ubc.ca. Abbreviation: BChl, bacteriochlorophyll. Communicated by Bob B. Buchanan, University of California, Berkeley, CA, May 3, 2005 Author contributions: J.T.B., J.O., R.E.B., C.L.V.D., and F.G.P. designed research; J.T.B., J.O., M.T.L., A.K.M., A.S.L., R.E.B., C.L.V.D., T.A.M., and F.G.P. performed research; J.T.B. and R.E.B. analyzed data; and J.T.B., R.E.B., and C.L.V.D. wrote the paper. Data deposition: The sequences reported in this paper have been deposited in the GenBank database [accession nos. AY627684 (FMO) and AY627756 (16S rRNA)]. |
ISSN: | 0027-8424 1091-6490 |
DOI: | 10.1073/pnas.0503674102 |