ACCESSION-LEVEL RECONSTRUCTION · AQUIFEX AEOLICUS VF5
A free-living cell that builds everything from carbon dioxide, hydrogen and minerals at 95 °C. Of the 1,553 proteins its genome encodes, this working inventory identifies 912 candidate proteins for that scenario, grouped by what they do, with the evidence for including each one.
This updated analysis revisits the original X-Ray of Life book compilation and builds on it with a protein-by-protein review of Aquifex aeolicus. The resulting working inventory contains 912 proteins across 16 categories; it remains an inference, not an experimentally established minimum.
Fix one scenario: free-living growth on H₂ and O₂, carbon from CO₂ through the reductive TCA cycle, 95 °C, a chemically defined mineral medium. A system is required if the cell cannot persist in that scenario without it. A protein is committed — counted in the 912 — if at least one of four independent kinds of evidence holds for it:
Proteins whose requirement remains unresolved are marked undetermined.
Being committed is not the same as knowing what a protein does. Each of the 912 also carries a specificity label:
Conservation bars show in how many of 8 reference genomes a matching protein is kept.
Open the contextual note within each protein entry for organizational features and a conservative origins assessment. Unknown functions remain unassigned.
The original Chapter 14 catalogue and its count audit are available under Evidence & count audit.