AUTHOR=Puggioni Vincenzo , Tempel Sébastien , Latifi Amel TITLE=Distribution of Hydrogenases in Cyanobacteria: A Phylum-Wide Genomic Survey JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics VOLUME=7 YEAR=2016 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2016.00223 DOI=10.3389/fgene.2016.00223 ISSN=1664-8021 ABSTRACT=
Microbial Molecular hydrogen (H2) cycling plays an important role in several ecological niches. Hydrogenases (H2ases), enzymes involved in H2 metabolism, are of great interest for investigating microbial communities, and producing BioH2. To obtain an overall picture of the genetic ability of Cyanobacteria to produce H2ases, we conducted a phylum wide analysis of the distribution of the genes encoding these enzymes in 130 cyanobacterial genomes. The concomitant presence of the H2ase and genes involved in the maturation process, and that of well-conserved catalytic sites in the enzymes were the three minimal criteria used to classify a strain as being able to produce a functional H2ase. The [NiFe] H2ases were found to be the only enzymes present in this phylum. Fifty-five strains were found to be potentially able produce the bidirectional Hox enzyme and 33 to produce the uptake (Hup) enzyme. H2 metabolism in Cyanobacteria has a broad ecological distribution, since only the genomes of strains collected from the open ocean do not possess