Gracilibacteria is a bacterial candidate phylum formerly known as GN02, BD1-5, or SN-2. It is part of the

Candidate Phyla Radiation The candidate phyla radiation (also referred to as CPR group) is a large evolutionary radiation of bacterial lineages whose members are mostly uncultivated and only known from metagenomics and single cell sequencing. They have been described as n ...

and the Patescibacteria group. The first representative of the Gracilibacteria phylum was reported in 1999 after being recovered from a deep-sea sediment sample. The representative 16S rRNA sequence was referred to as "BD1-5" (sample BD1, sequence 5) and while it was noted that it displayed low sequence identity to any known 16S rRNA gene, it was not proposed as a new phylum at this time. In 2006, representatives of Gracilibacteria were recovered from a hypersaline microbial mat from Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur, Mexico and proposed as a new phylum "GN02". The BD1-5/GN02 phylum was renamed "Gracilibacteria" in 2013. The first Gracilibacteria genome was recovered from an acetate-amended aquifer (Rifle, CO, USA) using culture-independent, genome-resolved

metagenomic Metagenomics is the study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental or clinical samples by a method called sequencing. The broad field may also be referred to as environmental genomics, ecogenomics, community genomics or microb ...

techniques in 2012. Genomic analyses suggest that members of the Gracilibacteria phylum have limited metabolisms and are likely symbionts or

endosymbiont An ''endosymbiont'' or ''endobiont'' is any organism that lives within the body or cells of another organism most often, though not always, in a mutualistic relationship. (The term endosymbiosis is from the Greek: ἔνδον ''endon'' "within ...

s. Members of Gracilibacteria use an alternative

genetic code The genetic code is the set of rules used by living cells to translate information encoded within genetic material ( DNA or RNA sequences of nucleotide triplets, or codons) into proteins. Translation is accomplished by the ribosome, which links ...

in which UGA encodes the

glycine Glycine (symbol Gly or G; ) is an amino acid that has a single hydrogen atom as its side chain. It is the simplest stable amino acid ( carbamic acid is unstable), with the chemical formula NH2‐ CH2‐ COOH. Glycine is one of the proteinog ...

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha a ...

instead of a

stop codon In molecular biology (specifically protein biosynthesis), a stop codon (or termination codon) is a codon (nucleotide triplet within messenger RNA) that signals the termination of the translation process of the current protein. Most codons in mess ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q26967716 Candidatus taxa Bacteria phyla