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Halobacteriales, from Ancient Greek ἅλς ( háls), meaning "salt", and "bacterium", are an order of the Halobacteria,See the NCBI webpage on Halobacteriales. Data extracted from the found in water saturated or nearly saturated with salt. They are also called , though this name is also used for other organisms which live in somewhat less concentrated salt water. They are common in most environments where large amounts of salt, moisture, and organic material are available. Large blooms appear reddish, from the pigment bacteriorhodopsin. This pigment is used to absorb light, which provides energy to create ATP. Halobacteria also possess a second pigment, halorhodopsin, which pumps in chloride ions in response to photons, creating a voltage gradient and assisting in the production of energy from light. The process is unrelated to other forms of photosynthesis involving electron transport; however, and halobacteria are incapable of carbon fixation from carbon dioxide.
Halobacteria can exist in salty environments because although they are aerobes they have a separate and different way of creating energy through photosynthesis. Parts of the membranes of halobacteria are purplish in color. These parts conduct photosynthetic reactions with retinal pigment rather than chlorophyll. This allows them to create a proton gradient across the membrane of the cell which can be used to create ATP for their own use. Some species in this order are used as model organisms to study how some microorganisms can survive in hypersaline environments, understand cellular processes and to research their physiology.
In 2015, Gupta et al. proposed the division of class Halobacteria into three orders, Halobacteriales, Haloferacales and Natrialbales based on comparative genomic analyses and the branching pattern of various phylogenetic trees constructed from several different datasets of conserved proteins and 16S rRNA sequences. This division greatly restricted the membership of the order Halobacteriales to include only species which were closely related to the type genus, Halobacterium.
A subsequent study examining higher taxonomic relationships within the order Halobacteriales resulted in the division of the order into three families, Halobacteriaceae, Haloarculaceae and Halococcaceae, each of which can be distinguished from each other and all other species through the presence of multiple highly specific molecular signatures, known as conserved signature indels.
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