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Science 16 April 1999:
Vol. 284. no. 5413, pp. 493 - 495
DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5413.493
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Reports

Dense Populations of a Giant Sulfur Bacterium in Namibian Shelf Sediments

H. N. Schulz, 1* T. Brinkhoff, 2 T. G. Ferdelman, 1 M. Hernández Mariné, 3 A. Teske, 4 B. B. Jørgensen 1

A previously unknown giant sulfur bacterium is abundant in sediments underlying the oxygen minimum zone of the Benguela Current upwelling system. The bacterium has a spherical cell that exceeds by up to 100-fold the biovolume of the largest known prokaryotes. On the basis of 16S ribosomal DNA sequence data, these bacteria are closely related to the marine filamentous sulfur bacteria Thioploca, abundant in the upwelling area off Chile and Peru. Similar to Thioploca, the giant bacteria oxidize sulfide with nitrate that is accumulated to <=800 millimolar in a central vacuole.

1 Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Celsiusstrasse, D-28359 Bremen, Germany.
2 Institute for the Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM), University of Oldenburg, Post Office Box 2503, D-26111 Oldenburg, Germany.
3 Facultat de Farmàcia, Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Joan XXIII, s/n, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
4 Department of Biology, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: hschulz{at}mpi-bremen.de

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