''Thermithiobacillus tepidarius'' (from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''tepidarium''; a warm bath fed by natural thermal water) is a member of the ''

Acidithiobacillia Acidithiobacillia is a class of the "''Pseudomonadota''". Its type order, the '' Acidithiobacillales'', was formerly classified within the ''Gammaproteobacteria'', and comprises two families of sulfur-oxidising autotroph An autotroph or prim ...

'' isolated from the thermal groundwaters of the Roman Baths at Bath,

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

.
/ref> It was previously placed in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

Thiobacillus ''Thiobacillus'' is a genus of Gram-negative Betaproteobacteria. ''Thiobacillus thioparus'' is the type species of the genus, and the type strain thereof is the StarkeyT strain, isolated by Robert Starkey in the 1930s from a field at Rutgers Un ...

''. The organism is a moderate

thermophile 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 ...

, , and an obligate aerobic chemolithotrophic

autotroph An autotroph or primary producer is an organism that produces complex organic compounds (such as carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) using carbon from simple substances such as carbon dioxide,Morris, J. et al. (2019). "Biology: How Life Wo ...

. Despite having an optimum pH of 6.0–7.5, growth can continue to an acid medium of pH 4.8. Growth can only occur on reduced

inorganic In chemistry, an inorganic compound is typically a chemical compound that lacks carbon–hydrogen bonds, that is, a compound that is not an organic compound. The study of inorganic compounds is a subfield of chemistry known as ''inorganic chemist ...

sulfur compounds (

thiosulfate Thiosulfate ( IUPAC-recommended spelling; sometimes thiosulphate in British English) is an oxyanion of sulfur with the chemical formula . Thiosulfate also refers to the compounds containing this anion, which are the salts of thiosulfuric acid, ...

, polythionates from

trithionate Trithionate is an oxyanion of sulfur with the chemical formula . It is the conjugate base of trithionic acid. Dilute sodium hydroxide hydrolyzes as follows, yielding sodium thiosulfate and sodium trithionate: 2 + 6 NaOH + 9 → + 2 + 8 Ce ...

to octathionate ''pace'' pentathionate, sulfide) and elementary sulfur, but unlike some species in other genus of the same family, ''

Acidithiobacillus ''Acidithiobacillus'' is a genus of the ''Acidithiobacillia'' in the " Pseudomonadota". The genus includes acidophilic organisms capable of iron and/or sulfur oxidation. Like all ''"Pseudomonadota"'', ''Acidithiobacillus'' spp. are Gram-negative ...

'', ''Thermithiobacillus'' spp. are unable to oxidise

ferrous iron In chemistry, iron(II) refers to the element iron in its +2 oxidation state. In ionic compounds (salts), such an atom may occur as a separate cation (positive ion) denoted by Fe2+. The adjective ferrous or the prefix ferro- is often used to ...

or iron-containing minerals. The genome sequence was completed in 2016.

References

External links

Type strain of ''Thermithiobacillus tepidarius'' at Bac''Dive'' - the Bacterial Diversity Metadatabase
Thermithiobacillus Thermithiobacillaceae Acidithiobacillales Acidithiobacillia Bacteria described in 1985