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Journal of Bacteriology, October 2007, p. 7525-7529, Vol. 189, No. 20
0021-9193/07/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JB.00782-07
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
In Situ Analysis of Sulfur Species in Sulfur Globules Produced from Thiosulfate by Thermoanaerobacter sulfurigignens and Thermoanaerobacterium thermosulfurigenes
,
Yong-Jin Lee,1
Alexander Prange,2,3
Henning Lichtenberg,3
Manfred Rohde,4
Mona Dashti,1,# and
Juergen Wiegel1*
Department of Microbiology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602,1
Microbiology and Food Hygiene, Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, D-41065 Mönchengladbach, Germany,2
Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices (CAMD), Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70806,3
Department of Microbial Pathogenicity, Helmholtz Center for Infection Research, Inhoffenstrasse 7, D-38124 Braunschweig, Germany4
Received 19 May 2007/
Accepted 10 July 2007

ABSTRACT
The
Firmicutes Thermoanaerobacter sulfurigignens and
Thermoanaerobacterium thermosulfurigenes convert thiosulfate, forming sulfur globules
inside and outside cells. X-ray absorption near-edge structure
analysis revealed that the sulfur consisted mainly of sulfur
chains with organic end groups similar to sulfur formed in purple
sulfur bacteria, suggesting the possibility that the process
of sulfur globule formation by bacteria is an ancient feature.

TEXT
The geochemical cycling of sulfur species plays an important
role in energy generation and supports microbial communities
in sulfur- and sulfide-rich environments (
6,
25). Thiosulfate
(S
2O
32–) is known to be one of the important products
of biological oxidation or chemical oxidation of sulfides and
plays a key role in the sulfur cycle in sediments (
4,
11,
12).
Thiosulfate can be oxidized to sulfate, disproportionated to
sulfate and sulfide, reduced to sulfide under anaerobic conditions,
and regarded as a widely used electron donor and acceptor for
many microorganisms (
1,
13). Recently, the thermophilic organism
Thermoanaerobacter sulfurigignens, isolated from SO
2-emitting
and sulfur-accumulating volcanic White Island (New Zealand),
was described to convert up to 1 M thiosulfate to elemental
sulfur and to tolerate sulfite up to 90 mM (
15). The conversion
of thiosulfate only to elemental sulfur instead to sulfide is
no longer a taxonomic discriminating feature for distinguishing
the
Firmicutes genera
Thermoanaerobacterium and
Thermoanaerobacter (
14,
18).
The formation of elemental sulfur (S°) is ecologically important for several groups of microorganisms (7), and the chemical nature of the formed sulfur has been analyzed for a variety of bacteria (9, 10, 17, 19, 20, 21, 29, 30). However, most of the studies of the sulfur analysis focused on mesophilic phototrophic sulfur bacteria (5, 23). Thus, little information was available on the properties of sulfur globules produced in thermophilic chemoheterotrophic anaerobic Firmicutes.
Biologically produced sulfur can be stored inside and/or outside a cell, and the sulfur stored inside a cell exhibits properties different from that of sulfur stored outside a cell (15, 21). Previous works showed that the chemical natures of the sulfur and the surface properties of sulfur globules vary and differ in different groups of bacteria (20, 21). For example, sulfur in bacterial sulfur globules is liquid and rather amorphous compared to that in pure elemental sulfur (10) and shows low density and hydrophilicity (9, 17, 28, 29). So far, it has not been unequivocally demonstrated whether the sulfur produced by members of the thermophilic anaerobic Firmicutes is formed inside, outside, or both inside and outside cells and, subsequently, whether its location has an effect on the chemical structure and sulfur differentiation of the sulfur globules.
Both Thermoanaerobacter sulfurigignens JW/SL-NZ826T and Thermoanaerobacterium thermosulfurigenes 4BT were cultured heterotrophically in the presence of various concentrations of thiosulfate (between 10 and 500 mM) as a possible electron acceptor. The culture medium contained 0.5% (wt/vol) glucose as a carbon source supplemented with 0.1% (wt/vol) yeast extract, and the pH was adjusted to 6.5 (15). Thiosulfate solution was prepared anaerobically using the modified Hungate technique (16) and sterilized separately. The sulfur globules were produced as early as the mid-exponential growth phase but mainly at the end of the exponential growth phase and during the stationary phase. Since the appearance of the majority of extracellular sulfur globules was correlated with a decline in cell numbers, it was assumed that the extracellular sulfur globules were due mainly to cell lysis (Fig. 1A). However, scanning electron micrographs revealed that small sulfur globules were also produced outside the cells when they were grown with thiosulfate, which, however, were absent when the cells were grown without thiosulfate (Fig. 1B and C). The morphology of sulfur globules was identified by transmission electron microscopy by examining ultrathin sections (Fig. 2A to E). Energy-dispersive X-ray analysis confirmed that both types of globules contained sulfur (Fig. 2E). The intracellular sulfur globules appeared to be enclosed by a membrane (not further characterized), as revealed by transmission electron microscopy (Fig. 2B). However, the observed structure could also be due to the mixtures of organic sulfanes with hydrophilic end groups (30).
X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy, a
powerful nondestructive tool for probing sulfur species in biological
samples in situ (
3,
20,
21,
23,
24), was used to analyze the
sulfur species of globules formed in species of two genera from
the phylum
Firmicutes,
Thermoanaerobacter sulfurigignens JW/SL-NZ826
T and
Thermoanaerobacterium thermosulfurigenes 4B
T (
14,
15,
27).
XANES spectroscopy allowed us to use directly cultured bacteria
in liquid media and to determine the valence of excited S atoms,
the lengths of sulfur chains, and the type of the chemical bond
in the second coordination shell of the excited sulfur atom
(e.g., C-C single, double, or triple bonds) (
24). Sulfur globules
of
Thermoanaerobacter sulfurigignens JW/SL-NZ826
T and
Thermoanaerobacterium thermosulfurigenes 4B
T were prepared according to the procedure
of Schmidt et al. (
28) and Brune (
2), with modifications. The
cells were disintegrated by ultrasonication, the sulfur globules
were separated by centrifugation, and the supernatant was removed
with a pipette for analysis. Samples were prepared for XANES
spectroscopy using the modified procedure of Prange et al. (
21)
(see the supplemental material for details). For the quantitative
analysis of the spectra obtained from both bacteria, a wide
variety of reference compounds of different sulfur species (representatives
for a given class of an atomic environment) were measured and
their respective relevances were tested (Fig.
3A). XANES spectra
were recorded at the DCM beamline at the CAMD, Baton Rouge,
LA, and analyzed quantitatively as described previously (
8).
The errors of the percentages of contribution of sulfur species
(Table
1) were estimated to be less than ±10% (absolute
value) (
21,
22). The S K-edge XANES spectra with their accompanying
WinXAS fits (
26) for
Thermoanaerobacter sulfurigignens (Fig.
3B, spectra a and b) and
Thermoanaerobacterium thermosulfurigenes (Fig.
3B, spectra c and d) revealed that the sulfur in cells
of these bacteria consisted mainly of sulfur chains (

80% had
the structure R-S
n-R, and

15 to 18% of minor substances had
the sulfur structure C-S-H/C-S-S-C) (Table
1). Only small amounts
of highly oxidized sulfur species such as sulfoxides and sulfonates
were detected. The other tested reference species (S
8 rings,
sulfate, thiosulfate), whose presence could be expected among
the sulfur species since, e.g., S
8 ring sulfur is thermodynamically
the most stable form of S° at ambient temperatures (
20),
were completely absent as determined with the fitting routine
except in a residual thiosulfate-containing
T. thermosulfurigenes culture sample taken 2 days after thiosulfate addition. The
data presented here indicated that the sulfur species produced
by
T. sulfurigignens and
T. thermosulfurigenes were comparable.
The sulfur existed mainly as sulfur chains with, presumably,
an additional "organic compound" present in the form of mono-
or bis-organyl sulfanes.
View this table:
[in this window]
[in a new window]
|
TABLE 1. Results of fitting the sulfur K-edge XANES spectra of Thermoanaerobacterium thermosulfurigenes and Thermoanaerobacter sulfurigignens to the sum of the reference spectra
|
Based on previous results, it was assumed that different sulfur
species in the sulfur globules reflect the different metabolic
properties and ecological niches (
21). Sulfur chains in anaerobically
grown cells differed from those of aerobically grown cells (
21).
Interestingly, the sulfur species determined in this study,
formed from thiosulfate reduction by anaerobic thermophilic
Firmicutes, are very similar to those formed from the oxidation
of sulfide by mesophilic phototrophic sulfur bacteria (
21,
22).
The phototrophic sulfur bacteria (phyla
Proteobacteria and
Chlorobi)
are regarded as evolutionarily quite distant from the family
Thermoanaerobacteriaceae of the phylum
Firmicutes. The atmosphere
of early Earth was sulfur rich, so anoxygenic photosynthesis
using reduced sulfur compounds as electron donors prevailed
among purple sulfur bacteria (e.g.,
Chromatiaceae and
Ectothiorhodospiraceae)
and green sulfur bacteria (
Chlorobiaceae). In this context,
the hypothesis by Urich et al. (
31) should be noted; based on
the crystal structure of the sulfur oxygenase reductase from
the thermoacidophilic archaeon "
Aquifex aeolicus" and theoretical
considerations, only linear sulfur and not cyclic sulfur species
can serve as a substrate for this enzyme. Furthermore, Franz
et al. (
8) found evidence that
Allochromatium vinosum uses only
the sulfur chain fraction of elemental sulfur and is unable
to take up
cyclo-octasulfur.
The results observed in this study imply that the formation of sulfur globules in the dissimilatory uses of various sulfur compounds may be more widespread among bacteria than previously thought and existed before the distant phyla (i.e., Proteobacteria, Chlorobi, and Firmicutes) diverged. At this time, the possibility of horizontal gene transfer cannot be excluded; thus, a thorough comparative analysis awaits the availability of the corresponding genome sequences.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was supported in part by grant from U.S. Department
of Energy (DE-FG05-95ER-20199 to J.W.), a grant from the National
Science Foundation (NSF-MO 0238407), and a grant from the Fonds
der Chemischen Industrie (661209 to A.P.).
We are grateful to Josef Hormes, Amitava Roy, and the staff members of CAMD for invaluable assistance and the State of Louisiana for providing the operating budget of the CAMD. We thank Ralf Steudel for kindly providing pure cyclo-octasulfur (S8 rings) and polymeric sulfur and Ina Schleicher (HZI) for technical assistance in electron microscopy.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Microbiology, The University of Georgia, 1000 Cedar Street, Athens, GA 30602-2605. Phone and fax: (706) 542-2651. E-mail:
jwiegel{at}uga.edu 
Published ahead of print on 20 July 2007. 
Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jb.asm.org/. 
# Present address: Biological Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, University of Kuwait, Safat, Kuwait. 

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Journal of Bacteriology, October 2007, p. 7525-7529, Vol. 189, No. 20
0021-9193/07/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JB.00782-07
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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