User:Dlope11

Metabolism

All species within the Halobacterium genus are required to contain certain molecules in their membranes such as ether-linked phosphoglycerides and glycolipids. According to researchers who discovered it, Halobacterium noricense cannot ferment glucose, galactose, sucrose, xylose or maltose. It is resistant to many antibiotics, including vancomycin and tetracycline, but can be killed by anisomycin. This organism does not produce the enzymes’ gelatinase and amylase, so it cannot break down starch or gelatin.

Genome

According to Joint Genome Institute, another complete genome analysis of Halobacterium (strain DL1) species was sequenced using 454 GS FLX, Illumina GAIIx. A more further research was done to study the Halobacterium species. A complete genome analysis of Halobacterium noricense (strain CBA1132) was recently performed by researchers from Korea in 2016. The researchers extracted the DNA using a QuickGene DNA tissue kit and purified the DNA using the MG Genomic DNA purification kit. Once extracted and purified, the genome was sequenced using a PacBio RS II system. It was found that H. noricense contains 2,587,453 base pairs, approximately 3,000 coding sequences, and 2,536 genes. It has a G+C content of approximately 54.4%. Halobacterium is currently known as monophyletic because their 16S rRNA have less than 80% similarity with their closest relatives, the methanogens.

It has been found that Halobacterium can survive in high metal concentration because they are extremely halophilic. This can be achieved through metal resistance which indicates that the strain CB1132 might also be able to survive in these high metal ion concentrations.

Relatives

Three reported strains H. salinarium NRC-1, H. sp. DL1, and H. salinarium R1 were compared to strain CBA1132. The phylogenetic trees based on MLST genes and ANI indicated that strain CBA1132 and strain DL1 are closely related while strains NRC-1 and R1 are closely related.

Ecology

Metagenomic analysis was performed on concentrated biomass from the last Dead Sea bloom and compared with hundreds of liters of brine (pH 6), revealing that the bloom was less diverse from brine. The Dead Sea is located on the borders of Israel and the Jordan River where its depth is around 300 m. The Dead Sea contains 1.98M Mg²⁺, 1.54M Na⁺, and 0.08M (1%) Br^- making the waters unique and the ecosystem harsh.

Samples were collected from the Dead Sea in 1992 at Ein Gedi 310 station during bloom season. The cells were centriguged and a reddish cell pellet was embedded in agarose plugs. DNA was extracted from the plugs and cloned into pCC1fos vector to construct two fosmid libraries.

BAC-end sequences were performed on each library for further analysis, and the sequences were scanned for vector contamination and removed by BLASTing. The read length was 734 bp for the 1992 library.

PCR 16S rRNA gene amplification was carried out and was used to construct a tree to calculate bootstrap values from a total of 714 sequence positions. Although halophiles are diverse, analysis revealed that most rRNAs had around 93% similarity to sequences in GenBank. H. noricense had a 95% similarity in the 1992 bloom.