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Journal of Bacteriology, August 2005, p. 5761-5766, Vol. 187, No. 16
0021-9193/05/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JB.187.16.5761-5766.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Biology Department, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida
Received 26 February 2005/ Accepted 25 May 2005
| INTRODUCTION |
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-proteobacterial chemolithoautotroph Thiomicrospira crunogena experiences broad fluctuations in DIC availability at its hydrothermal vent habitat and may use a CCM to facilitate growth during periods of CO2 scarcity. T. crunogena was cultivated in chemostats under DIC limitation to determine whether it has a CCM. Its KDIC for growth was 0.22 mM, with a maximum growth rate of 0.44 h1. In short-term incubations with [14C]DIC, DIC-limited cells had higher affinities for DIC (0.026 mM) than DIC-sufficient cells (0.66 mM). DIC-limited cells demonstrated an ability to use both extracellular CO2 and HCO3, as assayed by isotopic disequilibrium incubations. These cells also accumulated intracellular DIC to concentrations 100x higher than extracellular, as determined using the silicone oil centrifugation technique. Cells that were not provided with an electron donor did not have elevated intracellular DIC concentrations. The inducible changes in whole-cell affinity for DIC, the ability to use both extracellular CO2 and HCO3, and the energy-dependent generation of elevated intracellular concentrations of DIC are all consistent with the presence of a CCM in T. crunogena. Some 2.7 billion years ago, this planet was geochemically, ecologically, and biologically distinct from what it is today. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were 1 to 3 orders of magnitude higher (16, 30). Representatives from all three domains of life (Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya) were already present and had begun to diversify (3). Confronted with the precipitous fall of atmospheric and oceanic CO2 concentrations in the late Proterozoic, many autotrophic lineages likely responded with adaptations to maintain an adequate supply of CO2 for growth (27, 35).
Carbon-concentrating mechanisms (CCMs) can facilitate rapid autotrophic growth in environments where the CO2 and/or HCO3 concentrations are chronically or episodically low. CCMs are present in many species of cyanobacteria and generate an elevated intracellular concentration of HCO3 by using active HCO3 transport (22, 32) and CO2 traps (33). Carboxysomal carbonic anhydrase (EC 4.2.1.1) converts intracellular HCO3 to CO2, which is fixed by ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco; EC 4.1.1.39) (2, 15, 26). The elevated intracellular concentrations of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) resulting from active transport expedite carbon fixation by Rubisco by enhancing substrate availability and mitigating the Rubisco oxygenase reaction (15).
CCMs have not been rigorously studied for any other prokaryotic autotrophs (e.g., autotrophic Proteobacteria, planktomycetes, green sulfur bacteria, Aquificales, and Archaea). This is surprising, as CCMs are likely to be quite relevant to primary productivity in the diverse habitats where autotrophic microorganisms are found. CCMs with similarities to those present in cyanobacteria may be widespread. For example, the recently sequenced genomes of the photosynthetic
-proteobacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris and the ammonia-oxidizing ß-proteobacterium Nitrosomonas europaea contain genes for carbonic anhydrase and potential HCO3 transporters (4, 18). Furthermore, it has recently been demonstrated that carboxysomes from the chemolithoautotroph Halothiobacillus neapolitanus contain carbonic anhydrase and are believed to function similarly to those present in cyanobacteria (34).
A CCM could facilitate the growth of chemolithoautotrophs at hydrothermal vents, where there is an enormous degree of spatial and temporal variability in the concentration of CO2 (9). The hydrothermal vent
-proteobacterium Thiomicrospira crunogena is an obligate sulfur-oxidizing chemoautotroph that was originally isolated from a deep-sea hydrothermal vent habitat where the CO2 concentration oscillates between 20 µM and 1 mM, and HCO3 is always the most abundant form of DIC (equal to the sum of CO2, HCO3, and CO32) (9, 11). This is one of the fastest-growing chemoautotrophs, with a doubling time as low as 1 h (11). It continues to grow rapidly in batch culture even after drawing the concentration of DIC down to less than 20 µM, and it has carboxysomes (31). Both characteristics are consistent with the presence of a CCM.
Detailed physiological experiments were undertaken to determine whether this organism has a carbon-concentrating mechanism. Understanding how T. crunogena and other autotrophic microorganisms adapt to low concentrations of DIC during growth is relevant to understanding the physiology of these unique organisms and will provide insights into the response of autotrophic carbon fixation to changes in global geochemistry over Earth history.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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The [14C]DIC used to measure carbon uptake and fixation rates was purchased as a sterile pH 9.5 solution (2 mCi ml1, 50 mM DIC; MP Biomedicals Inc.). Upon receipt, 0.5-ml portions were sealed into glass vials with gas-tight gas chromatograph septa and stored at 4°C until use. These stock [14C]DIC solutions had stable counts over the course of this study (unpublished data).
Bacterial strains and growth conditions. Thiomicrospira crunogena XCL-2 (1) was cultivated at 25°C on liquid and solid TASW media modified from reference 11. TASW medium consists of artificial seawater supplemented with 40 mM thiosulfate, which T. crunogena utilizes as an electron donor, and Na HEPES to maintain the pH at 8 (100 mM in batch culture and 10 mM for continuous culture). The strain was maintained long term in 15% (vol/vol) glycerol-TASW medium at 80°C.
Cultivation under nutrient limitation. T. crunogena was cultivated in chemostats (New Brunswick Scientific BioFlo 110) to grow the cells under DIC or ammonia limitation. dO2/pH controllers monitored the pH and O2 concentrations in the growth chambers with electrodes, maintaining optimal growth conditions by adding 10 N KOH to keep the pH between 7.8 and 8 and by periodically pulsing the growth chamber with O2 gas to maintain its concentration between 3 and 25 µM. The growth chamber was supplied with TASW medium [2.5 mM DIC, 6.6 mM (NH4)2SO4] from a 10-liter reservoir at a range of dilution rates (0.03 to 0.44 h1).
Measurement of inducible changes in the half-saturation constant for DIC. To determine whether T. crunogena has inducible adaptations to cope with lower concentrations of DIC during growth, DIC-limited and DIC-sufficient (but ammonia limited) cells were cultivated in chemostats at a dilution rate of 0.1 vessel volume h1 and their whole-cell affinities for DIC were measured. For DIC-sufficient cells, the reservoir [DIC] was raised to 10 mM, and the ammonia concentration was dropped from 13.2 mM to 0.5 mM. When the dilution rate was 0.1 vessel volume h1, the steady-state [DIC] in the growth chamber was 0.08 mM for DIC-limited cells and 5.5 mM for DIC-sufficient cells. The growth chamber ammonia concentration for DIC-sufficient cells was below the limit of detection for the assay used (<10 µM). DIC or ammonia was confirmed to be limiting growth by observing higher biomass densities in the growth chamber, assayed as protein concentrations, when either DIC or ammonia concentrations (as appropriate) were raised.
To harvest the cells, 150-ml portions were removed from the growth chamber and centrifuged (5,000 x g, 4°C, 10 min). Pellets were resuspended in 3 ml TASW medium (for DIC-limited cells, trace DIC, 13.2 mM ammonia; for ammonia-limited cells, 5.5 mM DIC and 0.5 mM ammonia) and kept on ice until the experiment was completed (less than 30 min).
Ten-microliter aliquots of the suspended cells were added to seven glass reaction vials with stir bars, filled with 1.98 ml TASW medium (pH 8, 0.02 to 10 mM DIC, supplemented with [14C]DIC to a specific activity of 2 to 40 Ci/mol). Once per minute, over a time course of 4 min, a 400-µl aliquot was removed from each reaction vial and injected into a scintillation vial containing 200 µl 65°C glacial acetic acid. These acidified samples were gently sparged with air until dry to remove the [14C]DIC. Scintillation cocktail was added to quantify the organic 14C. Initial activities were measured by injecting 10-µl portions of the incubations into scintillation vials containing 3 ml scintillation cocktail plus 50 µl ß-phenethylamine.
Bicarbonate and carbon dioxide uptake and fixation.
To determine whether DIC-limited cells can use both extracellular bicarbonate and carbon dioxide, DIC-limited cells were cultivated and harvested as described above and resuspended in DIC-free TASW medium and bubbled with soda lime-treated (carbon dioxide-free) air until [DIC] = 0. Cell suspensions were then placed on ice and gently sparged with carbon dioxide-free air until use. Incubations with 14C were conducted as described above, with the following modifications. Instead of using [14C]DIC equilibrated at pH 8, an isotopic disequilibrium technique was used, in which either H14CO3 or 14CO2 was added (6). The 14C stock solution was pH 9.5 in distilled water, and therefore <0.1% CO2,
30% HCO3, and 70% CO32. Upon injection into a well-buffered pH 8 solution, the HCO3 concentration instantaneously jumps to 93% due to protonation of most of the CO32. To prepare dissolved 14CO2, 14C stock solution was added to DIC-free 1 mM H3PO4 in a sealed glass vial and allowed to equilibrate for
30 min before use to quantitatively convert the [14C]DIC to 14CO2.
Ten-microliter aliquots of suspended cells were added to reaction vials filled with 2 ml DIC-free TASW medium. H14CO3 or 14CO2 was added to the vials to begin the reaction, and time points were taken at 10-s intervals. Upon addition, 14CO2 generates H14CO3 with a half-dehydration time of
17 s, while 14CO2 forms from H14CO3 with a half-hydration time of 26 min (37). Accordingly, incubations in which 14CO2 or H14CO3 was initially added were limited to 20 s or 40 s, respectively.
Intracellular DIC accumulation and pH. The silicone oil centrifugation method was used to measure the size of the intracellular DIC pool and the intracellular pH (modified from reference 14). DIC-limited cells were grown and harvested as described above. Eppendorf tubes (0.6 ml) were prepared containing two immiscible layers of fluid: a dense bottom layer, consisting of 20 µl of a killing solution (2:1 [vol/vol] 1 M glycine, pH 10, Triton) overlaid with 65 µl of silicone oil (Dow Chemicals SF 1156). Cell suspensions (200 µl) were pipetted on top of the silicone oil layer, mixed with radiolabeled solute, and, at timed intervals, were centrifuged for 20 s. The cells passed through the silicone layer and pelleted in the killing solution, carrying intracellular radiolabeled solute. Immediately after centrifugation, the tubes were frozen in liquid nitrogen and the bottom layer with the cells was clipped into scintillation vials containing 200 µl glacial acetic acid (for measuring intracellular fixed carbon) or directly into 3 ml scintillation cocktail plus 50 µl ß-phenethylamine (for quantifying intracellular fixed and inorganic carbon, cell volumes, or pH).
For measuring intracellular DIC, TASW medium containing 3 to 240 µM [14C]DIC (40 Ci mol1) was allowed to equilibrate at pH 8 before the experiment. Two hundred-microliter portions of this solution were pipetted on top of the silicone layers in Eppendorf tubes, and 10 µl of suspended cells in DIC-free TASW medium was added. After 30 s, the tubes were spun at 14,000 x g for 20 s before freezing and processing, as preliminary time course experiments indicated that the intracellular DIC pool was constant after 20 s. For each concentration of DIC, samples were run in parallel: to measure intracellular DIC plus fixed carbon, pellets were clipped into scintillation cocktail alkalinized with ß-phenethylamine to measure fixed carbon, they were clipped into glacial acetic acid. Values from the samples clipped into glacial acetic acid were subtracted from those clipped into alkalinized scintillation cocktail to calculate the intracellular DIC pool. For estimating intracellular volume, which is necessary for calculating intracellular solute concentrations, incubations were also conducted with 9 µCi ml1 D-sorbitol (U-14C; MP Biomedicals) and 3 µCi ml1 tritiated water (Amersham Biosciences) (14, 29). The intracellular concentrations of both of these substances reached equilibrium before 2 min (unpublished data). Accordingly, incubations with sorbitol or tritium were terminated at 2 min by centrifugation.
To assess whether DIC accumulation was energy dependent or simply driven by intracellular alkalinization, the intracellular pH of DIC-limited cells was measured using the silicone oil centrifugation technique described above, with [14C]methylamine hydrochloride (ME; MP Biomedicals Inc.). ME has a pKa of 10.7 and accumulates inside cells as its positively charged, conjugate acid when the cytoplasmic pH is lower than the extracellular pH (29, 38). ME was added to cell suspensions (pH 8) to an activity of 0.45 µCi ml1 and allowed to equilibrate for 3 min, which was sufficient time to reach equilibrium concentrations inside the cells (K. Scott, unpublished data). Parallel incubations with [14C]sorbitol and tritiated water were conducted with the cell suspensions to make it possible to estimate the intracellular concentrations of the ME.
Due to concern that ME might be accumulating in the cells via uptake by ammonia permeases (20), intracellular pH was also measured with [2-14C]dimethadione (DMO) (5,5-dimethyl-2,4-oxazolidinedione; American Radiolabeled Chemicals) (29, 38). DMO has a pKa of 6.2 (29, 38) and accumulates inside cells as its negatively charged, conjugate base. Incubating cells with DMO under conditions where the extracellular pH is much more alkaline than the intracellular pH prevents DMO from accumulating within the cells. To raise intracellular DMO concentrations, the pH used for incubations with this compound was 7.3 instead of 8.0. A second series of incubations with ME were also conducted at pH 7.3.
Energy dependence of intracellular DIC accumulation. Cells were cultivated under DIC-limiting conditions as described above. To prepare them for these experiments, it was necessary to wash them four times with thiosulfate-free artificial seawater medium as this electron donor is present in their growth medium at a high concentration (40 mM). After the final wash, cells were resuspended in DIC-free, thiosulfate-free medium and put on ice while being gently bubbled with CO2-free air. Silicone oil centrifugation experiments with radiolabeled DIC were conducted as described above, at a range of thiosulfate concentrations (0 to 1 mM).
| RESULTS |
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6 liters of TASW medium had passed through the 1-liter growth chamber. The steady-state DIC concentrations in the growth chamber were substantially lower than in the reservoir due to consumption by T. crunogena (Fig. 1). A rectangular hyperbola was fitted to the data via the direct linear plot method (8) to estimate the KDIC (0.22 mM) and the maximum growth rate (µmax) (0.44 h1).
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The data are consistent with bicarbonate use contributing substantially to growth under DIC limitation. At pH 8 and 80 µM DIC, the conditions under which these cells were grown, the bicarbonate concentration was 74 µM and the carbon dioxide concentration was
0.7 µM (19). Using the Ks and Vmax values (Fig. 3; parameters for HCO3 use corrected as described above) and the Michaelis-Menten equation, the carbon fixation rates due to bicarbonate and carbon dioxide use are 45 and 39 nmol min1 mg protein1, respectively. Whether DIC-sufficient cells also demonstrate an ability to use extracellular bicarbonate remains to be determined; our manipulations of the DIC concentration in the cell suspensions to prepare them for these experiments would likely induce the expression of the same traits observed in DIC-limited cells.
Intracellular DIC accumulation and pH.
Intracellular concentrations of DIC exceeded the extracellular concentration by 100x (Fig. 4), consistent with energy-dependent bicarbonate transport and accumulation in the cytoplasm. The intracellular pH of T. crunogena is
7 at extracellular pHs of 8 (ME, 6.88 ± 0.10) and 7.3 (ME, 7.03 ± 0.06; DMO, 7.01 ± 0.32) (pH ± standard error; n = 3), precluding intracellular alkalinization as the driving force for intracellular DIC accumulation.
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| DISCUSSION |
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A CCM may serve to supplement the supply of CO2 available at T. crunogena's hydrothermal vent habitat. Temperature differences between bottom water (2°C) and dilute hydrothermal fluid (up to 35°C) create turbulent eddies at the vents. In turn, these eddies are responsible for seconds-to-hours-long oscillations of environmental CO2 from 1 mM down to
20 µM CO2 (9, 12). During the lower-CO2 periods, a CCM would enable T. crunogena to continue to grow rapidly.
The CCM present in T. crunogena has many parallels with cyanobacterial CCMs. In both cases, whole-cell affinities increase in response to the concentration of DIC available during growth. Energy-dependent transport generates an elevated concentration of intracellular DIC which, presumably in T. crunogena as in cyanobacteria, is "harvested" by carboxysomes (2, 26, 34). Use of extracellular HCO3 (Fig. 3) is consistent with the presence of HCO3 transporters, and a high cellular affinity for CO2 (1 µM) compared to Rubisco (30 to 140 µM for form IA, 100 to 250 µM for form II) (10) may be indicative of an active CO2 uptake system.
T. crunogena's genome (Scott, unpublished) encodes some genes whose products may function similarly to the components of cyanobacterial CCMs. An
-type carboxysome operon, which includes an
-class carbonic anhydrase gene (34), is present. Additionally, a gene for a SulP-type anion transporter has been found, similar to the SulP-type transporters from marine cyanobacteria that have recently been demonstrated to have HCO3-transporting activity (24).
It is also likely that the T. crunogena CCM will have several features that distinguish it from cyanobacterial CCMs. In contrast to cyanobacteria, whose genomes have a single form IA or form IB Rubisco gene (13, 21, 23, 28), T. crunogena's genome carries three genes for this enzyme (two form IA Rubisco genes and one form II Rubisco gene). The two form I Rubisco genes are expressed when cells are grown under low DIC conditions, while the form II Rubisco gene is preferentially expressed under high DIC conditions (Scott, unpublished), similar to what has been observed for Hydrogenovibrio marinus (36). Also different from cyanobacteria, T. crunogena's genome lacks any apparent homologs for the cyanobacterial bicarbonate transporter genes cmpABCD (22) and sbtA (32), as well as chpX and chpY, which encode key components of the cyanobacterial CO2 uptake system (25, 33). It is possible that novel HCO3 and CO2 transporters will be found in this organism, and it will be interesting to determine whether transporter and Rubisco gene expression is coordinately regulated. The generation of random and directed knockout mutants is under way (K. P. Dobrinski and K. M. Scott, unpublished data), with the objective of deciphering the mechanism for intracellular DIC accumulation in this organism.
T. crunogena is not likely to be the only chemolithoautotroph with a CCM. CCMs may be present in other chemolithoautotrophs that have a high demand for DIC (e.g., due to rapid growth rates), utilize a sufficiently abundant or electronegative electron donor to offset the energetic burden of a CCM, and inhabit an environment with periods of DIC or CO2 scarcity. Mechanistic and genetic studies of CCMs in several lineages of Bacteria and Archaea have the potential to illuminate how their ancestors coped with the 2-order-of-magnitude drop in CO2 availability occurring over Earth history (16, 30).
Autotrophs may have addressed this dilemma with a single solution that was spread by horizontal gene transfer (as Rubisco genes were) (7). Alternatively, each lineage may have come up with a unique solution. It is reasonable to anticipate lineage-specific innovation, based on cyanobacterial CCMs. In cyanobacteria, three nonhomologous bicarbonate-transporting systems and two forms of carboxysomes are scattered among the different clades (2, 24). Other autotrophs inhabit microhabitats even more disparate than those where cyanobacteria flourish (17) and embrace an astounding degree of phylogenetic and physiological diversity (at least four divisions of Bacteria and Archaea). Perhaps this ecological and phylogenetic diversity is reflected in a genetic and mechanistic diversity of CCMs.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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This work was supported in part by a New Researcher grant (USF).
| FOOTNOTES |
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