Hydrogenophilaceae

Hydrogenophilaceae
Scientific classification
Domain:	Bacteria
Phylum:	Pseudomonadota
Class:	Hydrogenophilia Boden et al., 2022
Order:	Hydrogenophilales Garrity et al., 2006
Family:	Hydrogenophilaceae Garrity et al., 2006
Genera
Hydrogenophilus[1] Tepidiphilus[1]

The Hydrogenophilaceae are a family of the class Hydrogenophilalia in the phylum Pseudomonadota ("Proteobacteria"), with two genera – Hydrogenophilus and Tepidiphilus. Like all Pseudomonadota, they are Gram-negative. All known species are thermophilic, growing around 50 °C, and use molecular hydrogen or organic molecules as their source of electrons to support growth; some species are autotrophs.

The genus Thiobacillus was previously considered to be a member in this family but was reclassified into the order Nitrosomonadales at the same time that the Hydrogenophilales were removed from the Betaproteobacteria to form the class Hydrogenophilalia.^[2]

Hydrogenophilus thermoluteolus is a facultative chemolithoautotroph originally isolated from a hot spring; however, it was detected 2004 in ice core samples retrieved from a depth around 3 km within the ice covering Lake Vostok in Antarctica.^[3] The presence of DNA from (and potentially live cells of) thermophilic bacteria in the ice suggests that a geothermal system could exist beneath the cold water body of Lake Vostok, or simply that non-thermophilic strains of Hydrogenophilus exist and were present in the ice.