Heliobacteria are a unique subset of bacteria that process light for energy. Distinguishable from other phototrophic bacteria, they utilize a unique photosynthetic pigment, bacteriochlorophyll g and are the only known Gram-positive phototroph. They are a key player in symbiotic nitrogen fixation alongside plants, and use a type I reaction center like green-sulfur bacteria.
FAMILY
via GBIF
Heliobacteria are a unique subset of bacteria that process light for energy. Distinguishable from other phototrophic bacteria, they utilize a unique photosynthetic pigment, bacteriochlorophyll g and are the only known Gram-positive phototroph. They are a key player in symbiotic nitrogen fixation alongside plants, and use a type I reaction center like green-sulfur bacteria.
RNA trees place the heliobacteria among the Bacillota. They have no outer membrane and like certain other Bacillota (Clostridia), they form heat-resistant endospores, which contain high levels of calcium and dipicolinic acid. Heliobacteria are the only Bacillota known to be phototrophic.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).