Abstract
The ability of phototrophic purple bacteria to fix N2 was discovered during studies of tight-dependent H2 production by Rhodospirillum rubrum (Gest and Kamen, 1949; Kamen and Gest 1949). Subsequent studies of N2 fixation in nonsulfur purple bacteria have shown this important metabolic process to be nearly universally distributed across the group (Madigan et al., 1984). Shortly after the discovery of N2 fixation in R. rubrum, strains of Chromatium and Chlorobium were also shown to be capable of fixing molecular nitrogen (Lindstrom et at., 1950). Until the 1980’s all subsequent work on aspects of nitrogen fixation in green bacteria employed the syntrophic mixed culture “Chloropseudomonas” (Zakhvateva et al., 1970; Zakhvateva and Kondrateva, 1971; Evans and Smith, 1971; Evans et al., 1971; Smith et al., 1971). These studies, of course, cannot be considered definitive because of the likelihood that the heterotrophic component of the “Chloropseudomonas” culture was itself a N2-flxer (many sulfate-reducing bacteria are known to fix N2 (Postgate and Kent, 1985).
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Heda, G.D., Madigan, M.T. (1988). Nitrogen Metabolism and N2 Fixation in Phototrophic Green Bacteria. In: Olson, J.M., Ormerod, J.G., Amesz, J., Stackebrandt, E., Trüper, H.G. (eds) Green Photosynthetic Bacteria. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-1021-1_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-1021-1_23
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