Search results for "Archaea"

Bacterial Viruses Subcommittee and Archaeal Viruses Subcommittee of the ICTV: Update of taxonomy changes in 2021

2021

In this article, we – the Bacterial Viruses Subcommittee and the Archaeal Viruses Subcommittee of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) – summarise the results of our activities for the period March 2020 – March 2021. We report the division of the former Bacterial and Archaeal Viruses Subcommittee in two separate Subcommittees, welcome new members, a new Subcommittee Chair and Vice Chair, and give an overview of the new taxa that were proposed in 2020, approved by the Executive Committee and ratified by vote in 2021. In particular, a new realm, three orders, 15 families, 31 subfamilies, 734 genera and 1845 species were newly created or redefined (moved/promoted). Supplem…

Archaea in boreal Swedish lakes are diverse, dominated by Woesearchaeota and follow deterministic community assembly

2020

Despite their key role in biogeochemical processes, particularly the methane cycle, archaea are widely underrepresented in molecular surveys because of their lower abundance compared to bacteria and eukaryotes. Here, we use parallel high‐resolution small subunit rRNA gene sequencing to explore archaeal diversity in 109 Swedish lakes and correlate archaeal community assembly mechanisms to large‐scale latitudinal, climatic (nemoral to arctic), and nutrient (oligotrophic to eutrophic) gradients. Sequencing with universal primers showed the contribution of archaea was on average 0.8% but increased up to 1.5% of the three domains in forest lakes. Archaea‐specific sequencing revealed that freshwa…

Proteinaceous Surface Layers ofArchaea: Ultrastructure and Biochemistry

2014

The cell walls of the Archaea are composed of different polymers such as glutaminylglycan, heterosaccharide, methanochondroitin, pseudomurein, protein, glycoprotein, or glycocalyx. The S-layer glycoprotein of Halobacterium salinarum was the first glycoprotein discovered in bacteria and archaea. Initially, the novel cell wall structures were viewed as curiosities, and their taxonomic significance was not realized until the concept of the Archaea was published. At this time, the results of cell wall studies supported the new view of the phylogeny of the Bacteria and Archaea. Many archaea possess proteinaceous surface layers (S layers), which form two-dimensional regular arrays. The chemical s…

Archaeal Cell Walls

2001

Archaea represent the third domain of life with the Bacteria and Eukarya. They have developed different types of cell envelopes. Keywords: glutaminylglycan; heteropolysaccharide; methanochondroitin; pseudomurein; S-layer (glyco-)protein; Archaea; cell envelope

Transition from Protozoa to Metazoa: An Experimental Approach

1998

Until recently, stromatolites were thought to be the oldest fossils on earth that were very abundant 2000 to 3000 Ma (million years) ago (Walter 1994). Recently, the biological origin of these fossils has been questioned (Walter 1996). The universal phylogenetic tree exhibits a tripartite division of the living world into Bacteria (“eubacterial”), Archaea (“archebacterial”), and Eucarya [“eukaryotic” (Woese 1987; Woese et al. 1991)]. Based on comparisons of amino acid (aa) sequence data from enzymes, it has been proposed that the common ancestor of prokaryotes and eukaryotes lived about 2000 Ma ago (Doolittle et al. 1996). Phylogenetic analysis of the 70kDa heat-shock proteins suggested tha…

Insights into the annotated genome sequence of Methanoculleus bourgensis MS2(T), related to dominant methanogens in biogas-producing plants

2014

The final step of the biogas production process, the methanogenesis, is frequently dominated by members of the genus Methanoculleus. In particular, the species Methanoculleus bourgensis was identified to play a role in different biogas reactor systems. The genome of the type strain M. bourgensis MS2(T), originally isolated from a sewage sludge digestor, was completely sequenced to analyze putative adaptive genome features conferring competitiveness within biogas reactor environments to the strain. Sequencing and assembly of the M. bourgensis MS2(T) genome yielded a chromosome with a size of 2,789,773 bp. Comparative analysis of M. bourgensis MS2(T) and Methanoculleus marisnigri JR1 revealed…

Cloning of sponge heat shock proteins: evolutionary relationships between the major kingdoms

2009

In the present study we have cloned from sponges (Porifera) those molecules which are involved in the protection of organisms against physiological and stress conditions; the inducible heat shock protein Mr 70,000, hsp70, from the marine sponge Geodia cydonium, its interacting hsp40, a DnaJ-like protein (from G. cydonium) and the constitutively expressed counterpart the glucose-regulated protein Mr 78,000, GRP78 from Suberites domuncula. Alignments of the sequences revealed that the deduced aa sequences of all sponge hsp's share high homology to other metazoan sequences, and are separated from related sequences from plants and fungi (hsp70, GRP78, DnaJ) as well as Bacteria (DnaK, the hsp70 …

Relationship between N-cycling communities and ecosystem functioning in a 50-year-old fertilization experiment.

2009

The relative importance of size and composition of microbial communities in ecosystem functioning is poorly understood. Here, we investigated how community composition and size of selected functional guilds in the nitrogen cycle correlated with agroecosystem functioning, which was defined as microbial process rates, total crop yield and nitrogen content in the crop. Soil was sampled from a 50-year fertilizer trial and the treatments comprised unfertilized bare fallow, unfertilized with crop, and plots with crop fertilized with calcium nitrate, ammonium sulfate, solid cattle manure or sewage sludge. The size of the functional guilds and the total bacterial community were greatly affected by …

2019

Although sediments of small boreal humic lakes are important carbon stores and greenhouse gas sources, the composition and structuring mechanisms of their microbial communities have remained understudied. We analyzed the vertical profiles of microbial biomass indicators (PLFAs, DNA and RNA) and the bacterial and archaeal community composition (sequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons and qPCR of mcrA) in sediment cores collected from a typical small boreal lake. While microbial biomass decreased with sediment depth, viable microbes (RNA and PLFA) were present all through the profiles. The vertical stratification patterns of the bacterial and archaeal communities resembled those in marine sedim…

Environmental distribution of prokaryotic taxa

2010

14 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, 10 additional files avalaible [http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/supplementary/1471-2180-10- 85-S10.PDF ]