Abstract
Bacteria are an important part of every ecosystem that they inhabit on Earth. Environmental microbiologists usually focus on a few dominant bacterial groups, neglecting less abundant ones, which collectively make up most of the microbial diversity. One of such less-studied phyla is Gemmatimonadota. Currently, the phylum contains only six cultured species. However, data from culture-independent studies indicate that members of Gemmatimonadota are common in diverse habitats. They are abundant in soils, where they seem to be frequently associated with plants and the rhizosphere. Moreover, Gemmatimonadota were found in aquatic environments, such as freshwaters, wastewater treatment plants, biofilms, and sediments. An important discovery was the identification of purple bacterial reaction centers and anoxygenic photosynthesis in this phylum, genes for which were likely acquired via horizontal gene transfer. So far, the capacity for anoxygenic photosynthesis has been described for two cultured species: Gemmatimonas phototrophica and Gemmatimonas groenlandica. Moreover, analyses of metagenome-assembled genomes indicate that it is also common in uncultured lineages of Gemmatimonadota. This review summarizes the current knowledge about this understudied bacterial phylum with an emphasis on its environmental distribution.
Highlights
Bacteria are an important component of all ecosystems, playing key roles in microbial food webs and the biogeochemical cycles
The double asterisk (**) means contain members capable of anoxygenic photosynthesis are marked in different colors, and there is no corresponding taxonomy in Genome Taxonomy Database (GTDB) for the genome so higher taxonomy level is used.the
High-throughput sequencing of environmental 16S rRNA genes documented that the phylum Gemmatimonadota is cosmopolitan, with members distributed across a wide range of natural environments
Summary
Bacteria are an important component of all ecosystems, playing key roles in microbial food webs and the biogeochemical cycles. Knowledge about microorganisms originated from work on species that could be cultivated and characterized based on their morphology, cell structure, chemical composition, and metabolic activities. This has changed since progress in molecular methods has enabled the study of microorganisms in their natural environment without the need for cultivation [1,2]. One of the bacterial phyla established through molecular phylogenetic methods is Gemmatimonadota It was first identified based on five environmental 16S rRNA gene sequences from deep-sea sediments, soils, and enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) reactor sludge, and it was named the BD-group [4,5,6]. Microorganisms 2022, 10, x FOR PEER REVIEW studies on the ecology of Gemmatimonadota with a focus on their diversity and distribution in the environment
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