User:AguaPika/Thermotoga petrophila

Thermotoga petrophila
Thermotoga petrophila is a gram negative, rod shaped, hyperthermophilic, anaerobic bacteria that contain a toga. T. petrophila was first isolated and discovered from an oil reservoir off of the coast of Japan. Because these organism are found in deep, hot aquatic settings, they have become of great interest for biotechnologies due to their enzymes functioning at high temperatures and pressures.

Description
T. petrophila, also known as the bacterial strain RKU-1, belongs to one of the deepest branching phylum lineages Thermotogota but it is apart of the newest branching clade phylogenetically with in its genus Thermotoga. More information became known when T. petrophila was first isolated from an oil reserve off the coast of Japan in 2001. This was the first time that this novel organism was morphologically and genetically described.

Morphological Characteristic
T. petrophila are rod shaped bacteria containing a sheath like structure that balloons at both ends called a toga. Typically, the cells size ranged from 2-7 µm long to 0.7-1.0 µm wide and have a flagella located at the subpolar and lateral regions of the cell. While optimal growth occurred at 80°C, it was capable of growing at temperatures ranging from 47-88°C. pH was also factored into growth patterns and revealed that growth occurs between the values of 5.2-9.0 with optimum growth occurring at a pH of 7. Ionic strength as well as oxygen availability affects the growth of T. petrophila negatively. It can grow and obtain its carbon source from the majority of sugars excluding mannitol and xylose. While it cannot reduce sulfate to hydrogen sulfide, it reduces sulfur to thiosulfate which is further reduced to hydrogen sulfide.

Genotypic Characteristics
T. petrophila shares more than 99% of its 16S rRNA genetic sequence with its sister clade, T. maritima, T. neapolitana, and T. naphthophila, but each of these are distinct species as they share less than 30% similarity shown by DNA-DNA hybridization experiments. The G+C base content of the DNA is 46.6%. T. petrophila is also known to contain one of the smallest plasmids. Thermotoga petrophila RKU1 plasmid (pRKU1) is negatively supercoiled,contains 846 base pairs, and carries only the rep gene. Due to T. Petrophila being part of the deep branching bacterial lineages, some horizontal genetic transfer has occurred with the maltose transporter gene (mal3) and the archaeal lineage Thermococcales, while the mal1 and mal2 genes are more closely related to bacterial maltose transporter genes.

Metabolism
The majority of the Thermotogota species use the Embden–Meyerhof–Parnas pathway to catabolize glucose, however, during the tricarboxylic acid pathway,T. petrophila, uses the malic enzyme to create a pyruvate intermediate. They oxidatively catabolize malate to succinyl-CoA and reductively produce succinate from malate. (https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.0901260106)

Applications
Because these organisms are found near hyperthermophic deep sea oil rigs, their enzymes tend to be thermostable. Recently, the textile industry was investigating the fermentative scale up strategy of cloning the α – amylase gene from T. petrophila into E. coli. Their results indicate that the efficiency of this enzyme helps with the desizing of cotton cloth.

For the biofuel industry, cellulase enzyme genes from T. petrophila have been cloned and put into E. coli for an enhanced saccharification reaction from softwood dust. With nitric acid treatment and the transformed enzymes, the results revealed that lignin removal was more efficiently optimized and that the recombinant cellulases actively hydrolyzed cellulose indicating that this method could potentially be used for better lignocellulosic based bioethanol manufacturing.

For medical purposes, T. petrophila K4 genetically engineered strain used its DNA polymerase (K4polL329A) for a detection method of acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) detection kit.