BIOL240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Delta Endotoxin, Mycobacterium, Gram-Positive Bacteria
6 Dec 2016
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This category includes the purple sulfur bacteria, c1-eaters, The proteobacteria are split into 5 main groups on the phylogenetic tree (a, b, y, d, e = alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon) but again this tree is very simplified. The proteobacteria consist of many of the most commonly encountered bacteria and thus they are very diverse. Remember alphaproteobacteria was the closest ancestor to mitochondria!! They are metabolically diverse having chemolithotrophs, chemoorganotrophs, and phototrophs, and they are morphologically diverse. The proteobacteria were named after proteus, the god of water (a shapeshifter) because of all their diversity. Before they were called the proteobacteria, they were called the purple sulfur bacteria. This is because they were purple and they used sulfur (h2s) instead of water for their photosynthesis. We re-named them because not all of them were actually purple sulfur bacteria. Only the first three groups (a, b, y) had some phototrophs (thus the purple colour from the h2s photosynthesis).
