Abstract
BackgroundPossession of gas vesicles is generally considered to be advantageous to halophilic archaea: the vesicles are assumed to enable the cells to float, and thus reach high oxygen concentrations at the surface of the brine.ResultsWe studied the possible ecological advantage of gas vesicles in a dense community of flat square extremely halophilic archaea in the saltern crystallizer ponds of Eilat, Israel. We found that in this environment, the cells' content of gas vesicles was insufficient to provide positive buoyancy. Instead, sinking/floating velocities were too low to permit vertical redistribution.ConclusionThe hypothesis that the gas vesicles enable the square archaea to float to the surface of the brines in which they live was not supported by experimental evidence. Presence of the vesicles, which are mainly located close to the cell periphery, may provide an advantage as they may aid the cells to position themselves parallel to the surface, thereby increasing the efficiency of light harvesting by the retinal pigments in the membrane.
Highlights
Possession of gas vesicles is generally considered to be advantageous to halophilic archaea: the vesicles are assumed to enable the cells to float, and reach high oxygen concentrations at the surface of the brine
Since the presence of gas vesicles was first recognized in "Bacterium halobium", Halobacterium salinarum, by Helena Petter [1,2], gas vesicles have become beloved study objects in the biology of halophilic archaea of the family Halobacteriaceae – from the beautiful electron microscopical stereopictures taken as early as 1956 by Houwink [3] to the in-depth analysis of genes involved in the synthesis of gas vesicles and its regulation [4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
As early as 1932 Petter [2] suggested that the presence of gas vesicles and the buoyancy the vesicles bestow upon the cells can be of considerable ecological advantage: the vesicles may buoy the cells to the surfaces of brine pools and salt lakes, where they would benefit from higher concentrations of oxygen, which may become a limiting fact in view of its low solubility in highly saline brines
Summary
Possession of gas vesicles is generally considered to be advantageous to halophilic archaea: the vesicles are assumed to enable the cells to float, and reach high oxygen concentrations at the surface of the brine. As early as 1932 Petter [2] suggested that the presence of gas vesicles and the buoyancy the vesicles bestow upon the cells can be of considerable ecological advantage: the vesicles may buoy the cells to the surfaces of brine pools and salt lakes, where they would benefit from higher concentrations of oxygen, which may become a limiting fact in view of its low solubility in highly saline brines. This interpretation was adopted by other workers as well [11,12].
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