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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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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