07/19/2010
New Scientific Status for Sulfate Reducing Bacteria
Summary
Sulfate reducing bacteria play important roles in the decomposition of organic matter and transformation of heavy metals in soils and subsurface environments. In the past five years, rapid progress has been made in advancing the status of sulfate reducer Desulfovibrio vulgaris to that of a model organism, enabling much more detailed studies on the central metabolic pathways of this class of microbes. Researchers at the University of Missouri have now identified a complex of electron transfer proteins, and the associated genes, in the D. vulgaris cell membrane that performs a critical step in sulfate reduction. This finding provides information on a central piece of the metabolic machinery that mediates sulfate reduction and will enable more refined studies of how these organisms adjust functional processes in response to environmental cues. This research has just been published in Applied & Environmental Microbiology and was conducted as a component of the collaborative ENIGMA Science Focus Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
References
Zane, G. M., H. B. Yen, & J. D. Wall, 2010 “Effect of the Deletion of qmoABC and Promoter Distal Gene Encoding a Hypothetical Protein on Sulfate Reduction in Desulfovibrio vulgaris,” Applied & Environmental Microbiology doi:10.1128/AEM.00691-10.