ABSTRACT
The isolated deep-sea piezophilic bacterial strains have been characterized in an effort to understand the interaction between the deep-sea environment and its microbial inhabitants. A key distinction between the high temperature and the low temperature deep-sea microbes is that the latter experience greater ordering influences on their membranes. Bacteria living in the deep-sea have several unusual features, which allow them to thrive in their extreme environments; ca. low temperature and high pressure. Members of the genus Shewanella are not unique to marine environments of Gram-negative, aerobic and facultatively anaerobic gamma-Proteobacteria. The type strain of this genus is Shewanella putrefaciens, which is a bacterium formerly known as Pseudomonas putrefaciens. The genus Photobacterium was one of the earliest known bacterial taxa and was first proposed by Beijerinck in 1889. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences has shown that the genus Photobacterium falls within the gamma-Proteobacteria and, in particular, is closely related to the genus Vibrio.
