Heliophilum fasciatum regulation in response to available sulfate and thiosulfate concentrations.

Heliophilum fasciatum is an anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria isolated from rice soil. Previous work outlined the existence of five nitrogen-fixation-like gene clusters potentially involved in sulfur metabolism. In this study, cultures of H. fasciatum were grown with varying sulfate and thiosulfate concentrations, and the transcriptomes were generated using Illumina RNA-sequencing. Differential gene expression analysis was utilized to investigate sulfur-mediated regulation of these nitrogen-fixation-like systems and H. fasciatum genes. Overall design: Heliophilum fasciatum cultures are grown in the same defined minimal media, but specific sulfur samples of varying concentrations were added separately. The RNA was extracted and prepared with the Illumina stranded total RNA library preparation kit. Differential expression analysis was conducted on the transcriptomes.