Pseudohaliea rubra CM41_15aT was deposited in the DSMZ by the Laboratoire Arago, Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Banyuls-sur-Mer, France) under the conditions of a Material Transfer Agreement. For routine cultivation all strains were grown in SYPHC medium at 28°C [15]. Replacing of pyruvate in SYPHC medium with 10 mM DL-malate

resulted in SYMHC medium. SYM medium was obtained, if the supplementary amino acids L-histidine and L-cysteine were omitted. The preparation of defined media for growth on single carbon sources and the generation of various gas atmospheres in batch cultures has been described elsewhere [15, 18]. A 40 W incandescent bulb was click here used as light source for the determination of growth curves in the light. For the illumination of cultures with light of distinct Selleckchem MK-4827 wavelengths LED lamps were used emitting blue,

green and red visible light with peak wavelengths of 627, 518 and 466 nm, respectively. All used chemicals were obtained from Sigma-Aldrich (Taufkirchen, Germany) and complex nutrients from DIFCO BBL (Becton Dickinson; Heidelberg, Germany). Determination of growth, cellular pigmentation and cytochromes The absorbance values of growing cultures were determined in a Thermo Scientific BioMate 6 split beam UV/visible spectrophotometer CB-5083 using 1 cm light path disposable cuvettes and water as blank. The A660nm reading was used to estimate the cell density. The cellular dry weight of grown cultures was determined by overnight freeze-drying of cell pellets harvested by centrifugation. Expression of the light-harvesting complex in L. syltensis was estimated by determining the A870nm to A660nm ratio, for cultures of C. litoralis and C. halotolerans a ratio of A880nm to A660nm was used and for P. rubra a ratio of A820nm to A660nm. Photosynthetic pigments were extracted from wet cell pellets Thalidomide using a mixture of

acetone/methanol (7:2) as described previously [15]. The concentrations of bacteriopheophytin a, bacteriochlorophyll a and spirilloxanthin in the acetone/methanol extracts were determined from the absorbance values obtained at 747, 771 and 475 nm, respectively, using the spectral reconstruction method of van der Rest and Gingras [31]. The detection and identification of various cytochrome types was done as reported previously [15]. Semiquantitative detection of transcripts using PCR RNA was isolated from cultures of C. litoralis DSM 17192T that were grown to early stationary phase under various incubation conditions. A culture volume equivalent to a cell suspension of one ml with an A660nm of approx. 1.0 was diluted with two volumes of RNAprotect Bacteria Reagent (Qiagen; Hilden, Germany), then cells were harvested by centrifugation.