Query: NC_005125:480500 Gloeobacter violaceus PCC 7421, complete genome Lineage: Gloeobacter violaceus; Gloeobacter; ; Gloeobacterales; Cyanobacteria; Bacteria General Information: This organism was isolated from a calcereous (chalky) rock in Switzerland. Photosynthetic bacterium. This organism is an obligate photoautotroph that lacks thylakoid membranes and probably has its photosynthetic machinery in the cytoplasmic membrane with various components exposed to the periplasm whereas in other cyanobacteria the components are situated in the thylakoid membrane and are exposed to the cytoplasm. This unusual arrangement may be due to the lack of various fatty acids that are found in the thylakoid membrane in other cyanobacteria. It has been predicted that this organism was one of the earliest to diverge from the cyanobacterial line.
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General Information: This red-pigmented organism's name means "strange berry that withstands radiation", marking the fact that this organism is one of the most radiation-resistant known. It can tolerate radiation levels at 1000 times the levels that would kill a human and it was originally isolated in 1956 from a can of meat that had been irradiated with X-rays. The resistance to radiation may reflect its resistance to dessication, which also causes DNA damage. This organism may be of use in cleaning up toxic metals found at nuclear weapons production sites due to the radiation resistance. This bacterium is also a highly efficient transformer, and can readily take up exogenous DNA from the environment, which may also aid DNA repair. This organism carries multiple copies of many DNA repair genes, suggesting a robust system for dealing with DNA damage. The recombination system may rely on multiple copies of various repeat elements found throughout the genome.