Energy Conservation in Heliobacteria: Photosynthesis and Central Carbon Metabolism

摘要: Heliobacteria are a group of anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria that use unique pigment, bacteriochlorophyll g, for photosynthetic energy conversion within type I homodimeric reaction center. Like their nonphotosynthetic relatives the clostridia, heliobacteria have gram-positive cell structure and can form heat-resistant endospores. also unusual in they only anaerobic phototrophs lack mechanism autotrophic growth. Growth is therefore dependent upon presence usable organic carbon sources occurs either photoheterotrophically or chemotrophically (via pyruvate fermentation). While knowledge heliobacterial photosynthesis physiology has steadily increased since relatively recent discovery these 1980s, high-resolution structural data pertaining to features apparatus not yet available. This chapter summarizes our current understanding conservation as it relates central metabolism (in both light dark conditions), electron transport, harvesting photochemistry