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Ferrous iron oxidation and rusticyanin in halotolerant, acidophilic ‘Thiobacillus prosperus’

James Le C. Nicolle

Susan Simmons

Stephan Bathe

Department of Biological Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

Correspondence
Paul R. Norris
P.R.Norris{at}warwick.ac.uk

The halotolerant acidophile ‘Thiobacillus prosperus’ was shown to require chloride for growth. With ferrous iron as substrate, growth occurred at a rate similar to that of the well-studied acidophile Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans. Previously, the salt (NaCl) requirement of ‘T. prosperus’ was not clear and its growth on ferrous iron was described as poor. A subtractive hybridization of cDNAs from ferrous-iron-grown and sulfur-grown ‘T. prosperus’ strain V6 led to identification of a cluster of genes similar to the rus operon reported to encode ferrous iron oxidation in A. ferrooxidans. However, the ‘T. prosperus’ gene cluster did not contain a homologue of cyc1, which is thought to encode a key cytochrome c in the pathway of electron transport from ferrous iron in A. ferrooxidans. Rusticyanin, another key protein in ferrous iron oxidation by A. ferrooxidans, was present in ‘T. prosperus’ at similar concentrations in cells grown on either ferrous iron or sulfur.

Present address: Green Biologics Ltd, Unit 45A, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4RU, UK.

Present address: National Blood Service, Southmead Road, Bristol BS10 5ND, UK.

Present address: Institut für Ingenieurbiologie und Biotechnologie des Abwassers, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Am Fasanengarten, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany.

The GenBank accession numbers for the partial 16S rRNA gene sequences of ‘T. prosperus’ strain V6 and ‘T. prosperus’ (DSM 5130) are EU653290 and EU653291, respectively. The GenBank accession number for the sequence of the genomic DNA region containing the strain V6 rus-operon-like gene cluster is EU653292.