Nitrospira (from Latin: nitro, meaning "nitrate" and Greek: spira, meaning "spiral") translate into "a nitrate spiral" is a genus of bacteria within the monophyletic clade[1] of the Nitrospirota phylum. The first member of this genus was described 1986 by Watson et al., isolated from the Gulf of Maine. The bacterium was named Nitrospira marina.[2] Populations were initially thought to be limited to marine ecosystems, but it was later discovered to be well-suited for numerous habitats, including activated sludge of wastewater treatment systems,[3] natural biological marine settings (such as the Seine River in France[4] and beaches in Cape Cod in the United States[5]), water circulation biofilters in aquarium tanks,[4] terrestrial systems,[5] fresh and salt water ecosystems, agricultural lands[6] and hot springs.[7]Nitrospira is a ubiquitous bacterium that plays a role in the nitrogen cycle[8] by performing nitrite oxidation in the second step of nitrification.[7]Nitrospira live in a wide array of environments including but not limited to, drinking water systems, waste treatment plants, rice paddies, forest soils, geothermal springs, and sponge tissue.[9] Despite being abundant in many natural and engineered ecosystems Nitrospira are difficult to culture, so most knowledge of them is from molecular and genomic data.[10] However, due to their difficulty to be cultivated in laboratory settings, the entire genome was only sequenced in one species, Nitrospira defluvii.[11] In addition, Nitrospira bacteria's 16S rRNA sequences are too dissimilar to use for PCRprimers, thus some members go unnoticed.[10] In addition, members of Nitrospira with the capabilities to perform complete nitrification (comammox bacteria) has also been discovered[9][12] and cultivated.[13]
^Fujitani H, Ushiki N, Tsuneda S, Aoi Y (October 2014). "Isolation of sublineage I by a novel cultivation strategy". Environmental Microbiology. 16 (10): 3030–3040. doi:10.1111/1462-2920.12248. PMID25312601.
^Stanley W. Watson, Eberhard Bock, Frederica W. Valois, John B. Waterbury, Ursula Schlosser (1986). "Nitrospira marina gen. nov. sp. nov.: a chemolithotrophic nitrite-oxidizing bacterium". Arch Microbiol. 144 (1): 1–7. Bibcode:1986ArMic.144....1W. doi:10.1007/BF00454947. S2CID29796511.
^Wagner M, Loy A, Nogueira R, Purkhold U, Lee N, Daims H (2002). "Microbial community composition and function in wastewater treatment plants". Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. 81 (1/4): 665–680. doi:10.1023/A:1020586312170. hdl:1822/1616. PMID12448762. S2CID21315850.