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Haloalkaliphilic Sulfur-Oxidizing Bacteria

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The Prokaryotes

1 Introduction

Chemolithoautotrophic sulfur-oxidizing bacteria (SOB) play an important role in the element cycling in natural and man-made environments because of their extremely high capacity to transform various sulfur compounds and their contribution to secondary production of organic matter. They are widely distributed in various habitats, associating primarily with sulfide-oxygen interface layers, where they successfully compete with chemical sulfide oxidation by oxygen. Energetically, the reaction of complete oxidation of sulfide or thiosulfate to sulfate (8 electrons) is among the most attractive for chemosynthesis, and not surprisingly, sulfur oxidizers can be found in many different groups of prokaryotes. Currently, lithoautotrophic sulfur bacteria are mostly found among the proteobacteria (alpha, beta, gamma and epsilon subdivision; The Colorless Sulfur Bacteria in the second edition; Kuenen and Robertson, 1992; Kelly and Wood, 2000). The currently known exceptions outside...

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Authors
  1. Dimitry Yu. Sorokin
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  2. Horia Banciu
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  3. Lesley A. Robertson
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  4. J. Gijs Kuenen
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, University of Minnesota, Box 196, Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0312, USA

    Martin Dworkin Professor Dr. (Editor-in-Chief) (Editor-in-Chief)

  2. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University Medical School, 299 Campus Drive, Fairchild, D039, Stanford, CA, 94305-5124, USA

    Stanley Falkow

  3. Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Eugene Rosenberg

  4. Department of Microbiology, Technical University Munich, 80290, Munich, Germany

    Karl-Heinz Schleifer

  5. DSMZ- German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures GmbH, Mascheroder Weg 1b, 38124, Braunschweig, Germany

    Erko Stackebrandt

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag

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Sorokin, D.Y., Banciu, H., Robertson, L.A., Kuenen, J.G. (2006). Haloalkaliphilic Sulfur-Oxidizing Bacteria. In: Dworkin, M., Falkow, S., Rosenberg, E., Schleifer, KH., Stackebrandt, E. (eds) The Prokaryotes. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30742-7_30

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