Deinococci are well known for their extreme resistance to UV, dessication and ionizing radiation. Thermus species include many hyper-thermophiles, including Thermus aquaticus, which are of immense biotechnological interest. The members of these genera along with those of Meiothermus, are presently placed in a distinct phylum on the basis of their branching pattern in 16S rRNA trees. However, until now no distinctive molecular or biochemical feature was known that was uniquely shared by these bacteria. The signatures described below provide for the first time, many distinctive molecular markers that are unique for this group and should prove useful in their identification. Signature sequences in many other proteins provide evidence that this phylum branches in between the Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria.
Click below for more information:
Selected References:
Griffiths, E. and Gupta, R.S. (2004) Distinctive protein signatures provide molecular markers and evidence for the monophyletic nature of the Deinococcus-Thermus phylum. J. Bacteriol. 186: 3097-3107. [Abstract]
Battista, J. R. and F. A. Rainey (2001) Family I. Deinococcaceae Brooks and Murray 1981, 356, VP emend. Rainey, Nobre, Schumann, Stackebrandt and da Costa 1997, 513 , p. 395-403. In D. R. Boone and R. W. Castenholz (eds.), Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology vol.1, The Archaea and the Deeply Branching and Phototrophic Bacteria. Springer, New York.
Tree of Life Web Project. 2006. Version 10 March 2006, http://tolweb.org
White, O., J. A. Eisen, J. F. Heidelberg, E. K. Hickey, J. D. Peterson, R. J. Dodson, D. H. Haft, M. L. Gwinn, W. C. Nelson, D. L. Richardson, K. S. Moffat, H. Y. Qin, L. X. Jiang, W. Pamphile, M. Crosby, M. Shen, J. J. Vamathevan, P. Lam, L. McDonald, T. Utterback, C. Zalewski, K. S. Makarova, L. Aravind, and M. J. Daly (1999) Genome sequence of the radioresistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans R1. Science 286:1571-1577. [Abstract]
Citation for this webpage:
Bacterial (Prokaryotic) Phylogeny Webpage (March 2006). http://www.bacterialphylogeny.com/index.html