Molecular evolution of the hyperthermophilic archaea of the Pyrococcus genus: analysis of adaptation to different environmental conditions

Table 1 Ecology and genome organization of P. furiosus, P. abyssi, and P. horikoshii (based on [3–5, 8, 9, 15, 17, 27, 70, 71])

	P. furiosus	P. abyssi	P. horikoshii
General ecological characteristics
Doubling time (min) [15, 70, 71]	37	33	32
Pressure optimum (MPa) [8]	11	21	1
Pressure range (MPa) [8]	<0.1-25	<0.1-40	<0.1-35
Temperature optimum (°C) [15, 70, 71]	100	96	98
Temperature range (°C) [15, 70, 71]	70-103	67-102	<80--102
Salt concentration optimum (%) [15, 70, 71]	2	3	2,4
Salt concentration range (%)[15, 70, 71]	0.5-5	0.7-5	1-5
pH optimum [15, 70, 71]	7	6.8	7
pH range [15, 70, 71]	5-9	4-8.5	5-8
Carbohydrate and energy sources
Complex substrates (i.e., yeast extract, peptone, etc.), 20 individual amino acids [15, 70, 71]	growth	growth	growth
Pyruvate, maltose [15, 70, 71]	growth	growth	death
Casamino Acids [15, 17, 70, 71]	weak growth	growth	death
β-glucosides (i.e., cellobiose and laminarin) [27]	growth	death	death
Other requirements
S⁰ [15, 70, 71]	practically no growth	enhanced growth	enhanced growth
Tryptophan [15, 70, 71]	not needed	not needed	needed
Genome features
Chromosome size (bp) [3–5]	1,908,256	1,765,118	1,738,505
G + C content (mol %) [3–5]	40.8	44.7	41.9
Number of ORFs [5]	2,208	1,765	2,061
Clusters of long tandem repeats [5]	7	4	6
Insertion sequences [5]	24	1	1
Amino acid biosynthesis (Val, Leu, Ile, Trp), aromatic amino acids biosynthesis, maltose transport, phosphate uptake [5, 9]	yes	yes	no
Restriction/modification enzymes (protection from bacteriophages) [5, 9]	no	yes	no
Chemotaxis-related genes [5, 9]	no	yes	yes
Histidine biosynthesis, riboflavin biosynthesis, trehalose transport, citrate cycle, cobalt transport [5, 9]	yes	no	no

ISSN: 1471-2164