Fig. 1

Unrooted phylogenetic tree based on 16S rRNA encoding sequences from 14 species of the genus Thermus. The phylogenetic tree was generated using the program package PHYLIP (version 3.695) [58] and TreeView X [59], based on a multiple sequence alignment (1,345 nts) that was generated with clustalX [60]. The number of nucleotide replacements at each position in the sequence was estimated with the DNADIST program and trees were constructed using NEIGHBOR. Bootstrap analysis was done using 1,000 iterations. CONSENSE was used to produce a majority rule consensus tree. The position of the isolate Thermus brockianus strain GE-1 is indicated in red. The 16S rRNA encoding sequence from Marinithermus hydrothermalis was used as outgroup. Accession numbers of all sequences are indicated in the figure. For the following species sequenced genomes are available at NCBI (number of available genome sequences are given in square brackets): T. caliditerrae [1], T. amyloliquefaciens [1], T. antranikianii [1], T. scotoductus [4], T. igniterrae [1], T. brockianus [1, this study], T. aquaticus [3], T. islandicus [1], T. thermophilus [5], T. filiformis [1], T. oshimai [2] and M. hydrothermalis [1]