Methanotrophy, Methylotrophy, the Human Body and Disease

Methylotrophic Bacteria use one-carbon (C1) compounds as their carbon source. They have been known to be associated to the human body for almost 20 years as part of the normal flora and were identified as pathogens in the early 1990s in end-stage HIV patients and chemotherapy patients. In this chapter, I look at C1 compounds in the human body and exposure from the environment and then consider Methylobacterium spp. and Methylorubrum spp. in terms of infections, its role in breast and bowel cancers; Methylococcus capsulatus and its role in inflammatory bowel disease, and Brevibacterium casei and Hyphomicrobium sulfonivorans as part of the normal human flora. I also consider the abundance of methylotrophs from the Actinobacteria being identified in human studies and the potential bias of the ionic strength of culture media and the needs for future work. Within the scope of future work, I consider the need for the urgent assessment of the pathogenic, oncogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic potential of Methylobacterium spp. and Methylorubrum spp. and the need to handle them at higher containment levels until more data are available

Microbial diversity and biogeochemical cycling in soda lakes

Soda lakes contain high concentrations of sodium carbonates resulting in a stable elevated pH, which provide a unique habitat to a rich diversity of haloalkaliphilic bacteria and archaea. Both cultivation-dependent and -independent methods have aided the identification of key processes and genes in the microbially mediated carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur biogeochemical cycles in soda lakes. In order to survive in this extreme environment, haloalkaliphiles have developed various bioenergetic and structural adaptations to maintain pH homeostasis and intracellular osmotic pressure. The cultivation of a handful of strains has led to the isolation of a number of extremozymes, which allow the cell to perform enzymatic reactions at these extreme conditions. These enzymes potentially contribute to biotechnological applications. In addition, microbial species active in the sulfur cycle can be used for sulfur remediation purposes. Future research should combine both innovative culture methods and state-of-the-art ‘meta-omic’ techniques to gain a comprehensive understanding of the microbes that flourish in these extreme environments and the processes they mediate. Coupling the biogeochemical C, N, and S cycles and identifying where each process takes place on a spatial and temporal scale could unravel the interspecies relationships and thereby reveal more about the ecosystem dynamics of these enigmatic extreme environments

Nucleophilic reactivity of a copper(II)-hydroperoxo complex

Copper(II)-hydroperoxo species are often detected as key intermediates in metalloenzymes and biomimetic compounds containing copper. However, the only reactivity has previously been observed for the copper(II)-hydroperoxo complexes is electrophilic, occurring through O-O bond cleavage. Here we report that a mononuclear end-on copper(II)-hydroperoxo complex, which has been successfully characterized by various physicochemical methods including UV-vis, rRaman, CSI-MS and EPR, is a reactive oxidant that utilizes a nucleophilic mechanism. In addition, DFT calculations fully support the electronic structure of this complex as a copper(II)-hydroperoxo complex with trigonal bipyramidal coordination geometry. A positive Hammett rho value (2.0(3)) is observed in the reaction of copper(II)-hydroperoxo complex with para-substituted acyl chlorides, which clearly indicates nucleophilic character for the copper(II)-hydroperoxo complex. The copper(II)-hydroperoxo complex is an especially reactive oxidant in aldehyde deformylation with 2-PPA and CCA relative to the other metal-bound reactive oxygen species reported so far. The observation of nucleophilic reactivity for a copper(II)-hydroperoxo species expands the known chemistry of metal-reactive oxygen species