Query: NC_011420:3650724 Rhodospirillum centenum SW, complete genome Lineage: Rhodospirillum centenum; Rhodospirillum; Rhodospirillaceae; Rhodospirillales; Proteobacteria; Bacteria General Information: Rhodospirillum centenum, also called Rhodocista centenaria, is a nitrogen-fixing photoheterotroph with a complex life cycle. R. centenum is one of the few known thermotolerant purple bacteria species with optimal growth temperature of 44 dgrees C and a maximal growth temperature of 48 degrees C. In liquid media this organism is motile by a single polar flagellum. R. centenum produces lateral flagella to become a swarming cell. Under low nutrient conditions R. centenum forms a desiccation- and UV-resistant cyst. R. centenum can often be cultivated from hot springs such as those found at Yellowstone National Park. R. centenum is emerging as a model organism for genetic and molecular genetic analysis of cyst formation.
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General Information: This strain was isolated from a human skin biopsy in Brazil, and passaged in nude mice and armadillos. The bacterium is a close relative of M. tuberculosis. However, compared to the latter, the genome of M. leprae is smaller due to reductive genome evolution, with many important metabolic activities including siderophore production, part of the oxidative chain, most of the microaerophilic and anaerobic respiratory chains, and numerous catabolic systems and their regulatory circuits eliminated due to extensive recombination events between dispersed repetitive sequences. It is evident that this species has undergone massive genome reduction over time as a result of its parasitic nature, discarding more than half its genes and rendering it the most striking example of genome reduction in a microbial pathogen.