1. For the organism given to you in lab Sulfolobus acidocaldarius) answer the fo
ID: 199246 • Letter: 1
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1. For the organism given to you in lab Sulfolobus acidocaldarius) answer the following questions. If you cannot find too much for the species, then look at the enus a. Offer a brief description of where it is found in nature, what it looks like, if it is Gram positive or negative (if known), how it is classified nutritionally (e.g. chemoautotroph) b. Explain how it obtains energy and generates ATP (include the reducing agent(s) and end products). c. How was it so named? (Attempt both genus and species name: consider where it was found, unique morphological or metabolic features, name of the person who discovered it, etc.) d. Anything else you find interesting, e.g. unique components of cell membrane, extracellular secretions, enzyme structure to allow it to function in extreme environments etc. Answer must be referenced appropriatelyExplanation / Answer
a) Sulfolobus acidocaldarius is a thermoacidophillic archaea growing at a optimal condition of 80°C and pH 2. They are found in terrestrial solfataric springs. These archaea are round, lobed or irregularly shaped and range from 0.8-1um diameter in size. Since archaeans lack peptidoglycan in their cell wall, they cannot be stained by usual gram staining procedures. When replacing iodine with potassium trichloro(eta 2-ethylene) platinate(II) as a mordant and observed under TEM, the cells stain gram negative because their cell wall gets disrupted during staining procedure. It can be either lithoautotrphic or chemoheterotophic.
b) Sulfolobus acidocaldarius, when lithoautotrophic oxidizes hydrogen sulfide to sulfate and when chemoheterotrophic uses sulfur to oxidize simple reduced carbon compounds. hydrogen sulfide is oxidized to sulfate through superpathway. In this pathway while converting adenosine 5'-phosphosulfate to sulfate by the enzyme sulfate adenyltransferase enzyme ATP is produced.
c) Genus Sulfolobus comes from Sulfo- sufur and lobus - balls named after their morphorolgy structure and characterstics. Species acidocaldarius comes from acidum - an acid, caldarius - pertaining to warm or hot. It was discovered by Thomas. D. Brock in the year 1972.
d) The S. acidocaldarius genome contains pARN-type conjugative plasmid, genes for a characteristic restriction modification system, a UV damage excision repair system, thermopsin, and an aromatic ring dioxygenase, all of which are absent from genomes of other Sulfolobus species. Sulfolobus acidocaldarius has three unique enzymes including a homolog of the bacterial enzyme to degrade poly(3-hydroxyalkanotes), a special transporter for malate and other C4-dicarboxylates, and two subunits of an aromatic ring dioxygenase to degrade simple aromatic ring compounds. To occupy an extreme environment efficiently, Sulfolobus acidocaldarius are capable of direct removal of DNA damage, base excision repair, nucleotide excision repair, and homolog-dependent double-strand-break repair. It also has a fairly short mRNA half-life distribution which is required for rapid gene expression reprogram upon sudden changes in the environment.
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