Hydrobacteria is a taxon containing approximately one-third of prokaryote species, mostly gram-negative bacteria and their relatives.[1] It was found to be the closest relative of an even larger group of Bacteria, Terrabacteria, which are mostly gram-positive bacteria.[2][1] The name Hydrobacteria (hydro = "water") refers to the moist environment inferred for the common ancestor of those species. In contrast, species of Terrabacteria possess adaptations for life on land.[2][1]
Some unrooted molecular phylogenetic analyses[5][6] have not supported this dichotomy of Terrabacteria and Hydrobacteria, but the most recent genomic analyses,[3][4] including those that have focused on rooting the tree,[3] have found these two groups to be monophyletic.
Hydrobacteria and Terrabacteria were inferred to have diverged approximately 3 billion years ago, suggesting that land (continents) had been colonized by prokaryotes at that time.[1] Together, Hydrobacteria and Terrabacteria form a large group containing 97% of prokaryotes and 99% of all species of Bacteria known by 2009, and placed in the taxon Selabacteria, in allusion to their phototrophic abilities (selas = light).[7] Currently, the bacterial phyla that are outside of Hydrobacteria + Terrabacteria, and thus justifying the taxon Selabacteria, are debated and may or may not include Fusobacteria.[3][4]
"Gracilicutes," which was described in 1978 by Gibbons and Murray,[8] is sometimes used in place of Hydrobacteria. However, "Gracilicutes" included cyanobacteria (a member of Terrabacteria) and was not constructed under the now generally accepted three-domain system.[8] More recently, a redefinition of "Gracilicutes" was proposed[9] but it did not include a molecular phylogeny or statistical analyses. Also, it did not follow the three-domain system, claiming instead that the lineage of eukaryotes + Archaea is nested within Bacteria as a close relative of Actinomycetota, a tree not supported in any molecular phylogeny.
^ abcdeBattistuzzi, F. U.; Hedges, S. B. (1 February 2009). "A Major Clade of Prokaryotes with Ancient Adaptations to Life on Land". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 26 (2): 335–343. doi:10.1093/molbev/msn247. PMID18988685.
^Hug, Laura A.; Baker, Brett J.; Anantharaman, Karthik; Brown, Christopher T.; Probst, Alexander J.; Castelle, Cindy J.; Butterfield, Cristina N.; Hernsdorf, Alex W.; Amano, Yuki; Ise, Kotaro; Suzuki, Yohey; Dudek, Natasha; Relman, David A.; Finstad, Kari M.; Amundson, Ronald; Thomas, Brian C.; Banfield, Jillian F. (May 2016). "A new view of the tree of life". Nature Microbiology. 1 (5): 16048. doi:10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.48. PMID27572647. S2CID3833474.
^Zhu, Qiyun; Mai, Uyen; Pfeiffer, Wayne; Janssen, Stefan; Asnicar, Francesco; Sanders, Jon G.; Belda-Ferre, Pedro; Al-Ghalith, Gabriel A.; Kopylova, Evguenia; McDonald, Daniel; Kosciolek, Tomasz; Yin, John B.; Huang, Shi; Salam, Nimaichand; Jiao, Jian-Yu; Wu, Zijun; Xu, Zhenjiang Z.; Cantrell, Kalen; Yang, Yimeng; Sayyari, Erfan; Rabiee, Maryam; Morton, James T.; Podell, Sheila; Knights, Dan; Li, Wen-Jun; Huttenhower, Curtis; Segata, Nicola; Smarr, Larry; Mirarab, Siavash; Knight, Rob (December 2019). "Phylogenomics of 10,575 genomes reveals evolutionary proximity between domains Bacteria and Archaea". Nature Communications. 10 (1): 5477. Bibcode:2019NatCo..10.5477Z. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-13443-4. PMC6889312. PMID31792218.
^Battistuzzi, FU; Hedges, SB (2009). "Eubacteria". In Hedges, SB; Kumar, S (eds.). The Timetree of Life. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 106–115.