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Candidate phyla radiation
A large evolutionary radiation of bacterial candidate phyla and superphyla / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The candidate phyla radiation (also referred to as CPR group) is a large evolutionary radiation of bacterial lineages whose members are mostly uncultivated and only known from metagenomics and single cell sequencing. They have been described as nanobacteria (not to be confused with non-living nanoparticles of the same name) or ultra-small bacteria due to their reduced size (nanometric) compared to other bacteria.
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Candidate phyla radiation | |
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Drawing of a CPR bacterium from a "GWB1" sample. | |
Scientific classification ![]() | |
Domain: | Bacteria |
(unranked): | Bacteria candidate phyla |
Infrakingdom: | Candidate phyla radiation |
Originally (circa 2016), it has been suggested that CPR represents over 15% of all bacterial diversity and may consist of more than 70 different phyla.[1] However, the Genome Taxonomy Database (2018) based on relative evolutionary divergence found that CPR represents a single phylum,[2] with earlier figures inflated by the rapid evolution of ribosomal proteins.[3] CPR lineages are generally characterized as having small genomes and lacking several biosynthetic pathways and ribosomal proteins. This has led to the speculation that they are likely obligate symbionts.[4][5]
Earlier work proposed a superphylum called Patescibacteria which encompassed several phyla later attributed to the CPR group.[6] Therefore, Patescibacteria and CPR are often used as synonyms.[7] The former name is not necessarily obsolete: for example, the GTDB uses this name because they consider the CPR group a phylum.[2]