Abstract
A fosmid clone 37F10 containing an archaeal 16S rRNA gene was screened out from a metagenomic library of Pearl River sediment, southern China. Sequence analysis of the 35 kb inserted fragment of 37F10 found that it contains a single 16S rRNA gene belonging to Miscellaneous Crenarchaeotal Group (MCG) and 36 open reading frames (ORFs). One ORF (orf11) encodes putative bacteriochlorophyll a synthase (bchG) gene. Bacteriochlorophyll a synthase gene has never been reported in a member of the domain Archaea, in accordance with the fact that no (bacterio)-chlorophyll has ever been detected in any cultivated archaea. The putative archaeal bchG (named as ar-bchG) was cloned and heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli. The protein was found to be capable of synthesizing bacteriochlorophyll a by esterification of bacteriochlorophyllide a with phytyl diphosphate or geranylgeranyl diphosphate. Furthermore, phylogenetic analysis clearly indicates that the ar-bchG diverges before the bacterial bchGs. Our results for the first time demonstrate that a key and functional enzyme for bacteriochlorophyll a biosynthesis does exist in Archaea.
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Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to Professors Carl E Bauer (Indiana University), Robert E Blankenship (Arizona State University), Donald A Bryant (The Pennsylvania State University), and Robert D Willows (Macquarie University, Australia) for critical reading of the paper and useful suggestions for the work. We thank Mr Ke Xu, Dr Zhen Wu and Dr Weihong Li (Xiamen University) for their help in HPLC analysis. This work is partly supported by NSFC grant (40625016, 40532011), China Ocean Mineral Resources R&D Association (COMRA DYLY0202-01).
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Meng, J., Wang, F., Wang, F. et al. An uncultivated crenarchaeota contains functional bacteriochlorophyll a synthase. ISME J 3, 106–116 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2008.85
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2008.85
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