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**INTRODUCTION**  In this study, strain CoronadoT was isolated from a stadium seat at Niedermeyer Field, Coronado High School in Coronado, California, USA as part of a nationwide Citizen Science project (Project MERCCURI - www.spacemicrobes.org.) One goal of Project MERCCURI was to collect bacterial isolates to be used for an experiment aboard the International Space Station (ISS). A cotton swab was used to swab the surface of a stadium seat, then colonies were isolated via plating onto agar plates. The 16S rRNA gene was sequenced from this isolated isolate  and was at least 99% identical to rRNA genes from a few uncultured organisms. Uncultured isolates with high identity (=>99%) were found in samples from deep ocean sediment and the human skin microbiome. However, the highest identity to a cultured organism (_Porphyrobacter donghaensis_) \cite{Yoon_2004} was only 95.5% (as determined by BLAST, \cite{2231712}). Given the low identity to characterized species, a more detailed study of this isolate was undertaken. A 2005 phylogenetic analysis of the _Alphaproteobacteria_ class led to the creation of a new family, _Erythrobacteraceae_, to house the genera _Erythrobacter_, _Porphyrobacter_ and _Erythromicrobium_ \cite{Lee_2005}. These genera were later joined by _Altererythrobacter_ \cite{Kwon_2007} and _Croceicoccus_ \cite{Xu_2009}, the latter work also emended the description of the family. Members of the _Erythrobacteraceae_ family are Gram-negative, aerobic bacteria that contain cartenoids, usually appearing pink, orange or yellow. They do not form spores, are chemo-organotrophic, and are most often associated with aquatic environments.