Prosthecobacter

Prosthecobacter is a genus of bacteria from the phylum Verrucomicrobiota with a distinctive characteristic; the presence of tubulin-like genes. Tubulins, which are components of the microtubule, have never been observed in Gracilicutes before.

Prosthecobacter
Scientific classification
Domain:	Bacteria
Kingdom:	Pseudomonadati
Phylum:	Verrucomicrobiota
Class:	Verrucomicrobiae
Order:	Verrucomicrobiales
Family:	Verrucomicrobiaceae
Genus:	Prosthecobacter Staley et al. 1976 ex Staley et al. 1980[1]
Type species
Prosthecobacter fusiformis Staley et al. 1976 ex Staley et al. 1980
Species
P. algae P. debontii P. dejongeii P. fluviatilis P. fusiformis P. vanneervenii
Synonyms
Brevifollis Otsuka et al. 2013

Tubulin was long thought to be specific to eukaryotes. More recently, however, several prokaryotic proteins have been shown to be related to tubulin.^[2][3][4][5]

Most bacteria have a homologous structure, FtsZ. Prosthecobacter are the exception to this, containing genes that have higher sequence homology to eukaryotic tubulin than FtsZ.

These genes are called bacterial tubulin a (BtubA) and bacterial tubulin b (BtubB). The properties are not exactly same. However, surface loops and microtubules are extremely similar.

Phylogeny

The currently accepted taxonomy is based on the List of Prokaryotic names with Standing in Nomenclature (LPSN)^[1] and National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)^[6]

16S rRNA based LTP_10_2024[7][8][9]	120 marker proteins based GTDB 09-RS220[10][11][12]
Prosthecobacter P. fluviatilis Takeda et al. 2008 P. vanneervenii Hedlund et al. 1998 Brevifollis gellanilyticus Otsuka et al. 2013 P. debontii Hedlund et al. 1998 P. dejongeii Hedlund et al. 1998 P. algae Lee et al. 2014 P. fusiformis Staley et al. 1976 ex Staley et al. 1980	Prosthecobacter P. vanneervenii Brevifollis gellanilyticus P. debontii P. dejongeii P. fusiformis

See also

• List of bacterial orders
• List of bacteria genera