RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

E N V I R O N M E N TA L M I C R O B I O L O G Y to marine methanotrophic archaea.

Interestingly, similar sequences were
also identified in freshwater ecosys-
A global unculture… tems from different global locations,
strongly suggesting that the process
DOI: of microbial anaerobic methane oxi-
10.1038/nrmicro1435 ladderane biosynthesis and biological dation coupled to denitrification has
Two reports recently published
in Nature shed new light on two hydrazine metabolism. This large worldwide ecological significance.
URLs processes only recently identified as number of genes is also indicative of The contribution of microor-
being major contributors to global an unexpected degree of metabolic ganisms to global biogeochemical
carbon and nitrogen cycling. Both versatility in the microorganism. cycles is well established; however,
processes — the anaerobic oxidation Environmental sequence analysis important aspects pertaining to their
of ammonium and methane — were was also used to analyse the genomes biology have remained ill-defined or
thought to be non-existent in nature of a microbial consortium that cou- overlooked. These two studies repre-
but are, in fact, catalysed by unrelated pled the direct oxidation of methane sent significant advances in address-
microorganisms that have yet to be to denitrification of nitrate in the ing these gaps and clearly show the
grown in pure culture. absence of oxygen. In this separate power of genomics in elucidating
The obligate anaerobic ammo- study, Marc Strous and colleagues the biology of environmentally
nium oxidation (anammox) reaction, enriched for microbial life derived important, yet ‘unculturable’, micro-
which uses nitrite as the primary from the anoxic sediments of a organisms.
electron acceptor, is accountable for freshwater canal over a 16-month David O’Connell
up to 50% of oceanic nitrogen loss. period. Analysis of the culture
Although identified in 1999, the revealed the presence of two different ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPERS Strous, M. et al.
Deciphering the evolution and metabolism of an
planctomycete-like bacteria that cata- types of microorganism, a bacterium anammox bacteria from a community genome.
lyse this process have proven difficult belonging to a novel phylum without Nature 440, 790–794 (2006) | Raghoebarsing, A. A.
to study owing to their extremely any documented cultured species, et al. A microbial consortium couples anaerobic
methane oxidation to denitrification. Nature 440,
slow growth. Now, Strous et al. have and an archaeon distantly related 918–921 (2006)
applied the advantages of environ-
mental genomics to gain insight into
the unusual biology of these impor-
tant microorganisms. Anammox
bacteria have a unique prokaryotic
organelle (the ‘anammoxosome’)
surrounded by ladderane lipids that The photograph shows Marc Strous extracting a mud sample from the Twentekanaal, a canal in the
contain hydrazine oxidoreductase, Netherlands. These anoxic sediments were used as the inoculum for the enrichment of an anaerobic
methane-oxidizing microbial consortium. Photograph courtesy of Radboud University Nijmegen.
an enzyme that combines nitrite and
ammonia in a one-to-one mecha-
nism. Using an anoxic laboratory
bioreactor that contained a complex
microbial community dominated by
the anammox bacterium Kuenenia
stuttgartiensis, the authors sequenced
over 1 gigabase of extracted DNA.
These sequences data allowed the
researchers to assemble the genome
of K. stuttgartiensis, one of the first
complete genome sequences of
an organism not available in pure
culture. Analysis of the genome
revealed the presence of over 200
genes directly involved in anammox
catabolism and respiration, as well
as candidate genes responsible for

NATURE REVIEWS | MICROBIOLOGY VOLUME 4 | JUNE 2006 | 1

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