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Record W4414413882 · doi:10.1101/2025.09.22.677880

Mining thermophile photosynthesis genes: a synthetic operon expressing <i>Chloroflexota</i> species reaction center genes in <i>Rhodobacter sphaeroides</i>

2025· preprint· en· W4414413882 on OpenAlexafffund
Yasir Rehman, Younghoon Kim, Michelle Tong, Ian K. Blaby, Crysten E. Blaby‐Haas, J. Thomas Beatty

Bibliographic record

VenuebioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025
Typepreprint
Languageen
FieldBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
TopicPhotosynthetic Processes and Mechanisms
Canadian institutionsUniversity of British Columbia
FundersBasic Energy SciencesNational Institute of Allergy and Infectious DiseasesNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaUniversity of California, San FranciscoOffice of ScienceNational Institutes of HealthGoddard Space Flight CenterJoint Genome InstituteU.S. Department of Energy
KeywordsAnoxygenic photosynthesisOperonPhotosynthesisGeneThermophileMetagenomicsPhotosynthetic reaction centreCyanobacteria

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract Photosynthesis is the foundation of the vast majority of life systems, and therefore the most important bioenergetic process on earth, and the greatest diversity in photosynthetic systems are found in microorganisms. However, understanding of the biophysical and biochemical processes that transduce light to chemical energy has derived from the relatively small subset of proteins from microbes that are amenable to cultivation, in contrast to the huge number of microbial DNA sequences encoding proteins that catalyze the initial photochemical reactions that has been deposited in databases, such as from metagenomics. We describe the use of a Rhodobacter sphaeroides laboratory strain for expression of heterologous photosynthesis genes to demonstrate the feasibility of mining this resource, focusing on hot spring Chloroflexota gene sequences. Using a synthetic operon of genes, we produced a photochemically active complex of reaction center proteins in our biological system. We also present bioinformatic analyses of anoxygenic type II reaction center sequences from metagenomic samples collected from hot (42-90° C) springs available through the JGI IMG database, to generate a resource of diverse sequences that potentially are adapted to photosynthesis at such temperatures. These data provide a view into the natural diversity of anoxygenic photosynthesis, through a lens focused on high-temperature environments. The approach we took to express such genes can be applied for potential biotechnology purposes as well as for studies of fundamental catalytic properties of these heretofore inaccessible protein complexes.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: Bench or experimental
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.002
Threshold uncertainty score0.004

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0010.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.014
GPT teacher head0.220
Teacher spread0.206 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designBench or experimental
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venuebioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)→Same topicPhotosynthetic Processes and Mechanisms→French-language works237,207→