SYNOPTIC DESCRIPTION OF THE PHYLUM GAMMAPROTEOBACTERIA (STACKENBRANDT ET AL. 1988)
| EUBACTERIA> PROTEOBACTERIAE> GAMMAPROTEOBACTERIA |
PHYLUM GAMMAPROTEOBACTERIA LINKS
| The following description comes mainly from Margulis and Schwartz (1998), Barnes (1984), Brock et al… (1994), and Tudge (2000). |
- I. SYNONYMS: γ-proteobacteria, purple sulfur bacteria, enterobacteria, pseudomonads, vibrios, and bioluminescent bacteria.
- II. PHYLUM CHARACTERISTICS
- A. Structure
- Cell Form: Unicellular rods (text with tooltip) A rod is an elongate cell form such that it has distinct ends (called poles). , cocci (text with tooltip) A coccus (cocci, pl.) is a spherical cell form. , and spirals (text with tooltip) A spiral is a cell form that is a cork-screw shaped rod. .
- Cell Wall: Gram- (text with tooltip) A Gram - cell loses the blue-black crystal-violet color following destaining with alcohol during the Gram Stain procedure. Then, it takes on the color of the counterstain, typically iodine. .
- Motility: Non-motile or 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. with polar (text with tooltip) Polar flagella are those that emerge from the poles of the cell (rods or spirals). or peritrichous (text with tooltip) Peritrichous flagella are inserted on the sides but not on the end of a rod or spiral cell. flagella.
- B. Physiology
- O2 Tolerance: Purple sulfur bacteria: obligate anaerobes; all others: aerobes or facultative anaerobes.
- Substrates:
- Purple sulfur bacteria: capture light energy with bacteriochlorophylls a and b; use carbondioxide and reduce it with electrons from hydrogen sulfide.
- Others are obligate aerobic or facultative anaerobic heterotrophs. Some like Legionella cannot use carbohydrates. Others feed on methane.
- Products:
- Purple sulfur bacteria: elemental sulfur and sulfate
- Most others use typically oxidative respiration, but can ferment to produce small organic acids.
- C. Other: Very diverse group of bacteria.
- D. Ecology: Parasitic or commensals in a wide variety of other living things; free-living in soil and aquatic systems.
- 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 |
