Thermoplasma

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Thermoplasma

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Archaea
Phylum:	Euryarchaeota
Class:	Thermoplasmata
Order:	Thermoplasmatales
Family:	Thermoplasmataceae
Genus:	Thermoplasma

Species

T. acidophilum Darland et al., 1970
T. volcanium Sergerer et al., 1988

Thermoplasma is a genus of archaea. It belongs to the Thermoplasmata, which thrive in acidic and high-temperature environments. Thermoplasma are facultative anaerobes and respire using sulfur and organic carbon. They do not contain a cell wall but instead contain a unique membrane composed mainly of a tetraether lipoglycan containing atypical archaeal tetraether lipid attached to a glucose- and mannose-containing oligosaccharide. This lipoglycan is presumably responsible for the acid and thermal stability of the Thermoplasma membrane.

Currently the genus Thermoplasma contains two species, T. acidophilum and T. volcanium. T. acidophilum was originally isolated from a self-heating coal refuse pile, at pH 2 and 59 °C. Many T. volcanium strains have been isolated from solfatara fields throughout the world. Both species are highly flagellated. The genomes for both T. acidophilum (Ruepp, 2000) and T. volcanicum have been sequenced.

[edit] References

Madigan, M.T. and Martinko, J.M. (2005). Brock Biology of Microorganisms, 11th Ed.. Pearson Prentice Hall.
Ruepp, A., Graml, W., Santos-Martinez, M.-L., Koretke, K.K., Volker, C., Werner Mews, H., Frishman, D., Stocker, S., Lupas, A.N. and Baumeister, W. (2000). "The genome sequence of the thermoacidophilic scavenger Thermoplasma acidophilum". Nature 407: 508-513. [1]