title: Isolation and characterization of a motile hydrogenotrophic methanogen from rice paddy field soil in Japan.
abstract: A hydrogenotrophic motile methanogen was isolated from flooded Japanese paddy field soil. Anaerobic incubation of the paddy soil on H(2)-CO(2) at 20 degrees C led to the enrichment of symmetrically curved motile autofluorescent rods. The methanogenic strain TM20-1 isolated from the culture was halotolerant and utilized H(2)-CO(2), 2-propanol-CO(2), or formate as a sole methanogenic substrate. Based on the 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity (94.8%) with Methanospirillum hungateii, and on the physiological and phenotypic characteristics, TM20-1 was suggested to be a newly identified species belonging to the genus Methanospirillum. This is the first report of isolation of the genus Methanospirillum strain from a rice paddy field.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Agriculture and Life Science, Hirosaki University, Bunkyo-cho 3, Hirosaki 036-8224, Japan. symbio@cc.hirosaki-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Akio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tonouchi
mesh_terms: D000693:Anaerobiosis; D006859:Hydrogen / Q000378:metabolism; D007564:Japan; D008124:Locomotion; D019639:Methanospirillum / Q000254:growth & development / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology; D012275:Oryza; D010802:Phylogeny; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D012988:Soil Microbiology; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: D006859:Hydrogen