Publications

4472

A marine, magnetotactic bacterium, designated strain MMS-1T, was isolated from mud and water from a salt marsh in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA, after enrichment in defined oxygen-concentration/redox-gradient medium. Strain MMS-1T is an obligate microaerophile capable of chemoorganoheterotrophic and chemolithoautotrophic growth. Optimal growth occurred at pH 7.0 and 24–26 °C. Chemolithoautotrophic growth occurred with thiosulfate as the electron donor and autotrophic carbon fixation was via the Calvin–Benson–Bassham cycle. The G+C content of the DNA of strain MMS-1T was 47.2 mol%. Cells were Gram-negative and morphologically variable, with shapes that ranged from that of a lima bean to fully helical. Cells were motile by means of a single flagellum at each end of the cell (amphitrichous). Regardless of whether grown in liquid or semi-solid cultures, strain MMS-1T displayed only polar magnetotaxis and possessed a single chain of magnetosomes containing elongated octahedral crystals of magnetite, positioned along the long axis of the cell. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that strain MMS-1T belongs to the family Rhodospirillaceae within the Alphaproteobacteria , and is distantly related to species of the genus Magnetospirillum . Strain MMS-1T is therefore considered to represent a novel species of a new genus, for which the name Magnetospira thiophila gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain of Magnetospira thiophila is MMS-1T ( = ATCC BAA-1438T = JCM 17960T).

Fixing on a Marine Partnership Nitrogen fixation by microorganisms determines the productivity of the biosphere. Although plants photosynthesize by virtue of the ancient incorporation of cyanobacteria to form chloroplasts, no equivalent endosymbiotic event has occurred for nitrogen fixation. Nevertheless, in terrestrial environments, nitrogen-fixing symbioses between bacteria and plants, for example, are common. Thompson et al. (p. 1546 ) noticed that the ubiquitous marine cyanobacterium UCYN-A has an unusually streamlined genome lacking components of the photosynthetic machinery and central carbon metabolism—all suggestive of being an obligate symbiont. By using gentle filtration methods for raw seawater, a tiny eukaryote partner for UCYN-A of less than 3-µm in diameter was discovered. The bacterium sits on the cell wall of this calcifying picoeukaryote, donating fixed nitrogen and receiving fixed carbon in return.