Amphibacillus xylanus

Classification

• Kingdom - Bacteria
• Phylum - Firmicutes
• Class - Bacilli
• Order - Bacillales
• Family - Bacillaceae
• Genus - Amphibacillus

Species

NCBI: Taxonomy

Amphibacillus xylanus

Description and Significance

Amphibacillus xylanus is a Gram positive, spore-forming, and chemoorganotrophic bacterium that was isolated from composts of manure with grass and rice straw. They are also facultative anaerobic organism that can grow in several different environments. However, it lacks cytochrome, quinone, and catalase. This helps explain the method of metabolism that Amphibacillus xylanus relies on.

Amphibacillus xylanus is also flagellated and motile, and it maintains many of the characteristics known to Amphibacillus. For example, the cells are rod-shaped and are 0.3 to 0.5 micrometers in diameter and are 0.9 to 1.9 micrometers long. The spores are oval in shape and heat resistant. The sporangia where the spores are formed are lysed and the spores are then released. These spores are formed under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Amphibacillus xylanus does not grow in nutrient broth, but it produces ethanol, acetic acid, and formic acid under anaerobic conditions and acetic acid under aerobic conditions from glucose. When colonies are grown on glucose agar, the colonies are small, circular, smooth, convex, entire, and white after only one day of incubation.

The microorganism grows ideally at pH values between 8 and 10, but it cannot grow at pH 7. The bacterium also contains a considerable amount of saturated straight-chain fatty acids, and little of its genome matched the genome of other bacterium.

Genome Structure

Amphibacillus xylanus

Author

Page authored by Lauren Jackson and Hillary Albert, students of Dr. N. Walker at Michigan State University.