User:TVenvisci/Melainabacteria

Evaluation of existing article "Melainabacteria".
Part 1: The information provided on this page is accurate, yet insufficient. The article includes background on how Melainabacteria is classified on the tree of life, but this is where article ends. There is significant work to be done regarding what its role is in the environment, how it behaves, where it exists, and its importance.

Part 2: I used Web of Science to look into previously existing research regarding Melainabacteria. Although less than 10 articles showed up, they contain useful information. Even without thousands of articles, these are sufficient enough to drastically improve the existing Melainabacteria page. I first researched and was interested in "Electric bacteria," but quickly realized that this yielded almost 10,000 articles, not all of which had anything to do with the Electric bacteria I wanted. I'm primarily interested in Melainabacteria because, as I discovered in my researching, it is related to Cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria is tied to water quality issues, which falls into my specific area of interest. I also know that there are several great resources regarding Cyanobacteria that exist that will be useful in finding information on Melainabacteria.

Lead
The Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) that occurred 2.4 billion years ago altered the course of life on Earth forever by increasing the abundance of oxygen in the atmosphere. Bacteria that existed before the GEO did not rely on the presence of oxygen as a source for metabolism, such as the billion-year-old Cyanobacteria. Melainabacteria is a close relative to Cyanobacteria, more commonly known as blue-green algae, though Melainabacteria diverged and do not photosynthesize. These ancient photosynthesizing microbes producing atmospheric oxygen are what allowed the environment to be composed in a way that supported early plant cells. Melainabacteria is a primitive microbe that thrived anaerobically prior to the GEO.

Melainabacteria are found today in some groundwater and mammalian guts. It was discovered that the gut and environmental types of Melainabacteria fall under different subphyla.

Ecological Niche
Melainabacteria can be found in a range of environments, including soil, water, and animal habitats. They can be often be found in the gut of humans and in the respiratory tract, oral environments, and skin surface, though rarely. Melainabacteria is often found in natural environments such as groundwater aquifers and lake sediment, as well as soil and bioreactors.

Human Body Habitat
Melainabacteria has been found to potentially play a role in digesting fiber in the human gut, as it is more commonly present in herbivorous mammals and those with plant-rich diets. Because plant diets require more fiber break-down, Melainabacteria may aid in this digestive function. However, scientists are unsure of why these microbes are in the gut and how they got there. Ongoing studies such as, "The human gut and groundwater harbor non-photosynthetic bacteria belonging to a new candidate phylum sibling to Cyanobacteria," funded by various organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The Hartwell Foundation, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the European Molecular Biology Organization and the Wellcome Trust.

Groundwater Harbor
Melainabacteria are also found in the aphotic zone of aquatic environments such as lake sediment and aquifers. Cyanobacteria is an intensely studied microbe in relationship to environmental impacts. This microbe blooms in freshwater systems as a result of excess nutrients and high temperatures, resulting in blue-green appearing algae. Because Melainabacteria and Cyanobacteria are related, it has raised concern that Melainabacteria thrives in groundwater systems. Melainabacteria seem to be originally accustomed to anaerobic functioning, yet evolved to tolerate oxygen following the GOE. The genomes of Melainabacteria were found to be bigger when found in aquifer systems and algal cultivation ponds than when in the mammalian gut environment.

Nitrogen Fixation
Some Melainabacteria has the functional gene set for nitrogen fixation, though not all. Gastranaerophilales, found in groundwater aquifers, does contain the functional gene set.

Connection to cyanobacteria
- maybe cover more

Genetics & Classification
- decently covered in original article