Microbial iron oxidation is an integral part of the iron redox cycle in wetlands. Nonetheless, relatively little is known about the composition and ecology of iron-oxidizing communities in the soils and sediments of wetlands. In this study, sediment cores were collected across a freshwater tidal marsh in order to characterize the iron-oxidizing bacteria (FeOB) and to link their distributions to...

Francisella tularensis, the bacterial cause of tularemia, infects the liver and replicates in hepatocytes in vivo and in vitro. However, the factors that govern adaptation of F. tularensis to the intrahepatocytic niche have not been identified. Using cDNA microarrays, we determined the transcriptional profile of the live vaccine strain (LVS) of F. tularensis grown in the FL83B murine hepatocyti...

Surfaces of carbon steel (CS) exposed to mixed cultures of iron-oxidizing bacteria (FeOB) and dissimilatory iron-reducing bacteria (FeRB) in seawater media under aerobic conditions were rougher than surfaces of CS exposed to pure cultures of either type of microorganism. The roughened surface, demonstrated by profilometry, is an indication of loss of metal from the surface. In the presence of C...

We identified and quantified abundant iron-oxidizing bacteria (FeOB) at three iron-rich, metal-contaminated creek sites with increasing sediment pH from extremely acidic (R1, pH 2.7), to moderately acidic (R2, pH 4.4), to slightly acidic (R3, pH 6.3) in a former uranium-mining district. The geochemical parameters showed little variations over the 1.5 year study period. The highest metal concent...

Iron plaque occurs on the roots of most wetland and submersed aquatic plant species and is a large pool of oxidized Fe(III) in some environments. Because plaque formation in wetlands with circumneutral pH has been largely assumed to be an abiotic process, no systematic effort has been made to describe plaque-associated microbial communities or their role in plaque deposition. We hypothesized th...

We report the isolation and physiological characterization of novel, psychrophilic, iron-oxidizing bacteria (FeOB) from low-temperature weathering habitats in the vicinity of the Juan de Fuca deep-sea hydrothermal area. The FeOB were cultured from the surfaces of weathered rock and metalliferous sediments. They are capable of growth on a variety of natural and synthetic solid rock and mineral s...

Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae causes bacterial blight, a serious disease of rice. Our analysis revealed that the X. oryzae pv. oryzae genome encodes genes responsible for iron uptake through FeoB (homolog of the major bacterial ferrous iron transporter) and a siderophore. A mutation in the X. oryzae pv. oryzae feoB gene causes severe virulence deficiency, growth deficiency in iron-limiting medi...

The ferrous iron transporter FeoB is an important factor in the iron metabolism of many bacteria. Although several structural studies have been performed on its cytosolic GTPase domain (NFeoB), the full-length structure of FeoB remains elusive. Based on a crystal packing analysis that was performed on crystals of NFeoB, a trimeric structure of the FeoB channel was proposed, where the transport ...

19 Iron is essential for pathogen survival, virulence, and colonization. Feo is suggested to function as 20 the ferrous iron (Fe) transporter. The enterobacterial Feo system is composed of 3 proteins: FeoB is 21 the indispensable component and is a large membrane protein likely to function as a permease; FeoA is 22 a small src-homology 3 (SH3) domain protein that interacts with FeoB; FeoC is a ...

Microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) is a complex biogeochemical process involving interactions between microbes, metals, minerals, and their environment. We hypothesized that sediment-derived iron-oxidizing bacteria (FeOB) would colonize and become numerically abundant on steel surfaces incubated in coastal marine environments. To test this, steel coupons were incubated on sediments ov...