| Introduction : Recently, the use of culture-independent molecular phylogenetic techniques has greatly increased our inventory of archaeal and bacterial diversity at deep-sea vents (e.g. Harmsen et al., 1997; Reysenbach et al., 2000; Takai et al., 2001) and several of the lineages appear to be endemic to deep-sea vents (Reysenbach et al., 2000b; Takai et al, 2000; Longnecker & Reysenbach, 2001). Using environmental data, some of these lineages have now been cultivated (L'Haridon et al., 1998; Campbell et al., 2001). For example, until recently, the chemolithoautotrophic and thermophilic bacterial lineage, the Aquificales, was restricted to shallow marine vents and terrestrial thermal springs. However, as part of two independent studies, one in... |
