''Pyrococcus woesei'' is an ultra-
thermophilic
A thermophile is an organism—a type of extremophile—that thrives at relatively high temperatures, between . Many thermophiles are archaea, though they can be bacteria or fungi. Thermophilic eubacteria are suggested to have been among the earl ...
marine
archaeon
Archaea ( ; singular archaeon ) is a domain of single-celled organisms. These microorganisms lack cell nuclei and are therefore prokaryotes. Archaea were initially classified as bacteria, receiving the name archaebacteria (in the Archaebact ...
. It is
sulfur
Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...
-reducing and grows optimally between 100 and 103 °C. Its cells have a roughly spherical, elongated and constricted appearance, similar to ''
Thermococcus celer''. Frequently, they occur as
diploforms. Cells grown on solid supports have dense tufts of
flagella
A flagellum (; ) is a hairlike appendage that protrudes from certain plant and animal sperm cells, and from a wide range of microorganisms to provide motility. Many protists with flagella are termed as flagellates.
A microorganism may have f ...
or
pili Pili may refer to:
Common names of plants
* ''Canarium ovatum'', a Philippine tree that is a source of the pili nut
* ''Heteropogon contortus'', a Hawaiian grass used to thatch structures
Places
* Pili, Camarines Sur, is a municipality in the ...
attached to one pole.
Kanoksilapatham et al. propose ''P. woesei'' as a subspecies of ''
P. furiosus''.
It is named after the discoverer of archaea as a whole -
Carl Woese
Carl Richard Woese (; July 15, 1928 – December 30, 2012) was an American microbiologist and biophysicist. Woese is famous for defining the Archaea (a new domain of life) in 1977 through a pioneering phylogenetic taxonomy of 16S ribosomal RNA, ...
References
Further reading
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External links
*
WORMS entryLPSNType strain of ''Pyrococcus woesei'' at Bac''Dive'' - the Bacterial Diversity Metadatabase
Archaea described in 1988
Euryarchaeota
{{Euryarchaeota-stub