Sulfur isotope enrichment during maintenance metabolism in the thermophilic sulfate-reducing bacterium Desulfotomaculum putei.

Values of Delta(34)S (=delta(34)S(HS)-delta(34)S(SO(4)), where delta(34)S(HS) and delta(34)S(SO(4)) indicate the differences in the isotopic compositions of the HS(-) and SO(4)(2-) in the eluent, respectively) for many modern marine sediments are in the range of -55 to -75 per thousand, much greater than the -2 to -46 per thousand epsilon(34)S (kinetic isotope enrichment) values commonly observed for microbial sulfate reduction in laboratory batch culture and chemostat experiments. It has been proposed that at extremely low sulfate reduction rates under hypersulfidic conditions with a nonlimited supply of sulfate, isotopic enrichment in laboratory culture experiments should increase to the levels recorded in nature. We examined the effect of extremely low sulfate reduction rates and electron donor limitation on S isotope fractionation by culturing a thermophilic, sulfate-reducing bacterium, Desulfotomaculum putei, in a biomass-recycling culture vessel, or "retentostat." The cell-specific rate of sulfate reduction and the specific growth rate decreased progressively from the exponential phase to the maintenance phase, yielding average maintenance coefficients of 10(-16) to 10(-18) mol of SO(4) cell(-1) h(-1) toward the end of the experiments. Overall S mass and isotopic balance were conserved during the experiment. The differences in the delta(34)S values of the sulfate and sulfide eluting from the retentostat were significantly larger, attaining a maximum Delta(34)S of -20.9 per thousand, than the -9.7 per thousand observed during the batch culture experiment, but differences did not attain the values observed in marine sediments.

Combined scanning transmission X-ray and electron microscopy for the characterization of bacterial endospores.

Endospores (also referred to as bacterial spores) are bacterial structures formed by several bacterial species of the phylum Firmicutes. Spores form as a response to environmental stress. These structures exhibit remarkable resistance to harsh environmental conditions such as exposure to heat, desiccation, and chemical oxidants. The spores include several layers of protein and peptidoglycan that surround a core harboring DNA as well as high concentrations of calcium and dipicolinic acid (DPA). A combination of scanning transmission X-ray microscopy, scanning transmission electron microscopy, and energy dispersive spectroscopy was used for the direct quantitative characterization of bacterial spores. The concentration and localization of DPA, Ca(2+) , and other elements were determined and compared for the core and cortex of spores from two distinct genera: Bacillus subtilis and Desulfotomaculum reducens. This micro-spectroscopic approach is uniquely suited for the direct study of individual bacterial spores, while classical molecular and biochemical methods access only bulk characteristics.