SYNOPTIC DESCRIPTION OF THE PHYLUM EPSILONPROTEOBACTERIA (STACKENBRANDT ET AL. 1988)
| EUBACTERIA> PROTEOBACTERIAE> EPSILONPROTEOBACTERIA |
PHYLUM EPSILONPROTEOBACTERIA LINKS
| The following description comes mainly from Margulis and Schwartz (1998), Barnes (1984), Brock et al. (1994), and Tudge (2000). |
- I. SYNONYMS: ε-proteobacteria, and helical bacteria.
- II. PHYLUM CHARACTERISTICS:
- A. Structure
- Cell Form: Unicellular spiraled rods.
- Cell Wall: Gram- (text with tooltip) A Gram + cell retains the blue-black crystal-violet color following destaining with alcohol during the Gram Stain procedure. .
- Motility: Motile (text with tooltip) Motile comes from the Latin, motus, a participle of the verb movere, which means to move. Although the Latin word means general movement, the Biological term means a cell or colony of cells that move by means of flagella. polar flagella (text with tooltip) Polar flagella are those that emerge from the poles of the cell (rods or spirals). .
- B. Physiology
- O2 Tolerance: Anaerobic; microaerophilic (text with tooltip) Microaerophilic (adj.) organisms require (or tolerate) small concentrations of elemental oxygen for metabolism .
- Substrates: Inhabitants of hydrothermal vents and microbial mats are chemolithoautotrophic and use a variety of inorganic compounds as electron sources: H2, formate, fumarate, sulfide, elemental sulfur, thiosulfate, and complex organic compounds. Pathogens and commensals oxidize only amino acids or TCA (Kreb’s Cycle) intermediates.
- Products: Include H2S, NH3, N2, nitrite, nitrous oxide.
- C. Other: Some are important opportunistic pathogens.
- D. Ecology: Many are thermophiles associated with geothermal vents. They can be important constituents of microbial mats, and live as commensals/opportunistic pathogens.
- A. Structure
| LITERATURE CITED Black, J. G. 2002. Microbiology, Principles and Explorations. 5th ed. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. New York. Brock, T. D., M.T. Madigan, J.M. Martinko, and J. Parker. 1994. Biology of Microorganisms. 7th ed. Prentice Hall. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Emerson, D., J. A. Rentz, T. G. Lilburn, R. E. Davis, H. Aldrich, C. Chan, and C. L. Moyer. 2007. A novel lineage of Proteobacteria involved in formation of marine Fe-oxidizing microbial mat communities. PLoS ONE. 2007 (8): e667. http://www.plosone.org Gao, B. and R. S. Gupta. 2007. Phylogenetic analysis of proteins that are distinctive of Archaea and its main subgroups and the origin of methanogenesis. BMC Genomics. 8:86. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/8/86. Garrity, G. M., M. Winters, and D. Searles. 2001. Bergey’s manual of systematic bacteriology. 2nd ed. Springer-Verlag. New York. Garrity, G. M., J. A. Bell, and T. G. Lilburn. 2003. Taxonomic Outline of the Prokaryotes. Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology. 2nd edition. Release 4.0. Springer-Verlag. New York. pp. 1-397. Margulis, L. and K. Schwartz. 1988. Five kingdoms, an illustrated guide to the phyla of life on earth. 2nd Edition. W. H. Freeman and Co. New York. Margulis, L. and K. Schwartz. 1998. Five kingdoms, an illustrated guide to the phyla of life on earth. 3rd Edition. W. H. Freeman and Co. New York. Stackebrandt, E., R. G. E. Murray, and H. G. Trüper. 1988. Proteobacteria classis nov., a name for the phylogenetic taxon that includes the “Purple Bacteria and Their Relatives”. International Journal of Systematic Bacteriology. 38(3): 321-325. Tudge, C. 2000. The Variety of Life, A Survey and a Celebration of all the Creatures That Have Ever Lived. Oxford University Press. New York. Williams, K. P., B. W. Sobral, and A. W. Dickerman. 2007. A robust species tree for the Alphaproteobacteria. Journal of Bacteriology. 189(13): 4578-4586. Woese, C. R. and G. E. Fox. 1977. Phylogenetic structure of the prokaryotic domain: the primary kingdoms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 74:5088-5090. Woese, C. R., O. Kandler, and M. L. Wheelis. 1990. Towards a natural system of organisms: Proposal for the domains Archaea, Bacteria, and Eucarya. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 87: 4576-4579. |
| By Jack R. Holt. Last revised: 02/20/2013 |
