Hemoplasmas, short for hemotropic mycoplasmas, are wall-less bacteria belonging to the class Mollicutes. Unlike most bacteria, they cannot be grown easily in the laboratory, which has long hampered efforts to study them. Instead, scientists rely on molecular techniques, chiefly the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, to detect their genetic material in blood samples. Two species are known to infect cattle worldwide: Mycoplasma wenyonii, often abbreviated Mw, and a bacterium currently designated “Candidatus Mycoplasma haematobovis,” formerly known as “Candidatus Mycoplasma haemobos.” The Candidatus designation is applied by microbiologists to organisms that can be characterized by molecular methods but have not yet been cultivated or fully formally described.

Infections with these organisms are often subtle. Some animals show no obvious signs of disease, while others may develop anemia, fever, weight loss, reduced milk yield, or swelling of the limbs and teats. Because the clinical picture can be vague and the bacteria cannot be cultured routinely, hemoplasma infections in cattle are frequently overlooked, and their economic impact on dairy production is difficult to quantify. In tropical countries such as Thailand, where dairy farming is an important agricultural sector and arthropod vectors such as flies and ticks are abundant year-round, the question of what these bacteria are doing to herd health takes on added urgency.

To address this, a team led by Kritsada Thongmeesee of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, working with colleagues at Prince of Songkla University, Vongchavalitkul University, and the University of Melbourne in Australia, collected blood samples from 522 dairy cattle across Thailand. The animals were screened using a PCR assay that targets the 16S ribosomal RNA gene, a workhorse of bacterial identification. This gene, which encodes part of the small subunit of the bacterial ribosome, contains regions that are conserved across all bacteria as well as variable stretches that allow researchers to distinguish between closely related organisms. The team also examined the 23S ribosomal RNA gene, which encodes part of the large ribosomal subunit and provides an independent set of variable positions for comparison.

The screening produced a striking result: 161 of the 522 cattle, or 30.8 percent, tested positive for hemoplasma DNA. The 95 percent confidence interval for this estimate ranged from 26.9 to 35.0 percent, meaning that roughly one in three animals in the sampled population was carrying at least one of these blood-dwelling bacteria. That prevalence figure alone underscores how common hemoplasmas are in Thai dairy herds, even if most infections remain clinically silent or undiagnosed.

From the pool of positive samples, the researchers selected 52 for sequencing of both the 16S and 23S rRNA genes. The selection was not random; the team prioritized samples that had produced strong, discrete PCR bands, which are more likely to yield clean sequence data. While this approach maximizes the quality of the genetic information obtained, it also means the 52 sequenced samples represent a curated subset rather than a statistical sample of all infections, a caveat the authors acknowledge in their interpretation.

When the sequences were subjected to phylogenetic analysis, a method that reconstructs evolutionary relationships by comparing genetic differences, the results revealed a picture more complicated than the standard two-species model. As expected, some sequences clustered with Mycoplasma wenyonii and others with “Candidatus Mycoplasma haematobovis.” But in addition to these two recognized taxa, the analyses identified two further lineages that were clearly divergent, sitting on separate branches within what the researchers describe as the M. wenyonii complex. These lineages are distinct enough in their ribosomal RNA sequences to suggest they may represent previously unrecognized organisms, yet the team has deliberately refrained from naming them as new species.

That restraint reflects a growing consensus in bacterial taxonomy. Ribosomal RNA genes are powerful tools for detection and preliminary classification, but they capture only a small fraction of a bacterium’s genome, and organisms with similar rRNA profiles can nonetheless differ substantially in their metabolism, virulence, and ecology. The authors therefore regard the two divergent lineages as candidate lineages, a provisional status that will stand until whole-genome sequencing, additional independent genetic markers, and biological characterization, including studies of pathogenicity and transmission, can establish whether they truly deserve species-level recognition. This cautious approach avoids inflating the taxonomy of a group that is already difficult to study while flagging the lineages for future investigation.

The discovery has practical implications for veterinary medicine and livestock management in the region. If multiple genetically distinct hemoplasmas circulate in Thai dairy cattle, then diagnostic tests designed to detect one species may miss others, and studies that lump all hemoplasma infections together may obscure differences in disease potential between the lineages. Understanding which lineages cause illness, how they are transmitted, whether arthropod vectors play a role, and how they respond to antimicrobial treatment will require the kind of genomic and biological work the authors call for. It also raises questions about whether the divergent lineages are confined to Thailand or circulate more widely in cattle and buffalo populations across Asia and beyond, having simply gone undetected because most surveys rely on short diagnostic fragments rather than comparative sequencing of multiple genes.

For now, the study stands as a reminder that even well-known pathogens can harbor hidden diversity when examined closely. A routine prevalence survey of dairy cattle, conducted with standard molecular tools and a careful two-gene approach, was enough to double the number of recognized lineages within the bovine M. wenyonii complex. As sequencing becomes cheaper and whole-genome approaches reach veterinary microbiology, researchers expect more such surprises, not only in cattle but across the many mammalian species that host these elusive red blood cell parasites. The Thai findings provide a foundation for that work and a caution against assuming that the hemoplasmas infecting a herd are always the ones in the textbooks.

Subject of Research: Genetic diversity of hemotropic Mycoplasma lineages in dairy cattle in Thailand

Article Title: Two divergent hemoplasma lineages within the Mycoplasma wenyonii complex in dairy cattle from Thailand revealed by comparative analyses of partial 16S and 23S rRNA gene sequences

Article References: Thongmeesee, K., Tiyamanee, W., Narapakdeesakul, D., Kamkong, P., Wechtaisong, W., Colella, V., & Tiawsirisup, S. (2026). Two divergent hemoplasma lineages within the Mycoplasma wenyonii complex in dairy cattle from Thailand revealed by comparative analyses of partial 16S and 23S rRNA gene sequences. Parasites & Vectors. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-026-07678-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s13071-026-07678-6

Keywords: hemoplasmas, Mycoplasma wenyonii, Candidatus Mycoplasma haematobovis, dairy cattle, Thailand, 16S rRNA gene, 23S rRNA gene, molecular diagnostics, phylogenetics, bacterial taxonomy, livestock health, Parasites & Vectors

Far-red light-utilizing cyanobacteria first came to prominence when researchers discovered that certain strains, when grown under light enriched in far-red wavelengths beyond roughly 700 nanometers, activate a coordinated genetic program known as FaRLiP, short for far-red light photoacclimation. This program replaces the standard photosynthetic apparatus with variants containing chlorophyll d and chlorophyll f, pigments that absorb light in the near-infrared range where conventional chlorophyll a is essentially blind. In nature, far-red light dominates in shaded environments such as under plant canopies, beneath microbial mat layers, and in the crevices of rocks where visible wavelengths are filtered out. For cyanobacteria living in dense hot spring mats, the ability to exploit these longer wavelengths can mean the difference between thriving and being starved of usable energy, making FRLCyano a potentially significant but historically underappreciated component of geothermal microbial communities.

The central obstacle to studying these organisms has always been detection. Traditional approaches rely on pigment analysis or on culturing strains under far-red light in the laboratory, both of which are time-consuming and prone to systematic bias. Many cyanobacteria express the FaRLiP program only inducibly, meaning the characteristic chlorophyll f signature appears only when cells are actually exposed to far-red light, so culture-dependent surveys can easily miss species whose induction conditions were not replicated. As a result, the true abundance and diversity of FRLCyano in the environment has likely been underestimated. The Taiwanese team addressed this gap by applying the Far-Red Cyanobacteria Identification framework, or FRCI, a customized 16S rRNA gene database and classification pipeline designed to flag cyanobacterial lineages with known far-red light capabilities directly from environmental sequence data, bypassing the need for cultivation or pigment measurements altogether.

Applying FRCI to a comprehensive dataset of 16S rRNA gene amplicons from Taiwanese hot springs, the researchers identified 11 distinct FRLCyano amplicon sequence variants across the sampled geothermal sites. Taxonomically, these variants were primarily affiliated with two cyanobacterial genera: Leptolyngbya, a group of thin filamentous forms common in microbial mats, and Calothrix, a genus of heterocyst-forming filamentous cyanobacteria. The detection of these lineages across multiple springs suggests that far-red-capable phototrophs are a recurring feature of Taiwan’s geothermal landscapes rather than isolated curiosities. Because the identification rests on phylogenetic placement within a curated database rather than on visible pigment expression, the approach can detect organisms even when their far-red machinery is dormant at the time of sampling, providing a more complete census than pigment-based methods alone.

A crucial strength of the study lies in its validation strategy. Because any classification scheme built on 16S rRNA gene data carries the risk of false positives, the team cross-checked their FRCI results against two independent lines of functional evidence. First, they tested for consistency with apcE2, a gene that encodes the far-red-specific form of a phycobilisome linker protein and serves as a reliable molecular marker of the FaRLiP program. This marker had not been incorporated into the initial FRCI framework, so agreement between the two methods represents a genuine independent confirmation. Second, the researchers examined the relationship between FRLCyano abundance and chlorophyll f concentrations measured in the samples, finding a significant positive correlation. Together, these validations demonstrate that the 16S-based classification is not merely a statistical artifact but genuinely tracks organisms equipped for far-red photosynthesis in the wild.

With a validated detection method in hand, the team turned to the ecological question of what controls FRLCyano distribution. The analysis revealed that relative abundance of these organisms is driven by two environmental variables acting in opposite directions: higher pH and lower temperature. In practical terms, far-red light-utilizing cyanobacteria in Taiwanese hot springs favor the cooler, more alkaline end of the geothermal gradient. This pattern makes physiological sense. Photosynthetic machinery, particularly the protein-pigment complexes of the FaRLiP program, is vulnerable to thermal denaturation, and extremely hot spring waters exclude most oxygenic phototrophs entirely. Alkaline conditions, meanwhile, may favor cyanobacterial growth more broadly, consistent with the well-known prevalence of cyanobacterial mats in alkaline geothermal systems worldwide. The finding provides a predictive framework: researchers hunting for FRLCyano should prioritize moderate-temperature, alkaline springs rather than the hottest vents.

The study did not stop at Taiwan’s borders. By extending the FRCI framework to publicly available hot spring datasets from around the world, the researchers uncovered distinct biogeographical signatures in the global distribution of far-red light-utilizing cyanobacteria. The most striking of these was the rarity of Fischerella, a genus of morphologically complex, multiseriate filamentous cyanobacteria known to include far-red-capable members, in Taiwanese springs compared with hot spring communities in other regions. Such geographic patterning suggests that dispersal limitation, historical contingency, or regionally distinct environmental filters shape which FRLCyano lineages colonize a given geothermal field. Biogeography, often assumed to matter little for microorganisms given their enormous populations and ready dispersal, appears to leave a measurable imprint on this functional group, echoing a broader theme in microbial ecology that microbial distributions are not always cosmopolitan.

Cultivation also earned its place in the study. Alongside the sequence-based survey, the team isolated a novel far-red light-utilizing strain, Chroococcidiopsis sp. GD1, from the Taiwanese samples. Chroococcidiopsis is a genus of desiccation- and radiation-tolerant unicellular cyanobacteria famous for surviving in some of Earth’s most inhospitable niches, from hot deserts to the deep subsurface, and its appearance in a hot spring adds another extreme environment to the genus’s portfolio. The successful isolation of GD1 underscores a point the authors emphasize throughout: sequence-based detection and culture-based characterization are complementary, not interchangeable. Sequencing can reveal who is present, but only cultivation allows researchers to test physiology directly, confirm far-red photoacclimation experimentally, and preserve a living reference strain for future work on the biochemistry of chlorophyll f-containing photosystems.

The broader significance of this research extends beyond Taiwan’s geothermal fields. Far-red photosynthesis has attracted intense interest for applications in agricultural engineering, where introducing chlorophyll f-based machinery into crop plants has been proposed as a way to deepen light penetration through dense canopies and boost photosynthetic efficiency. It also bears on astrobiology, since organisms that can photosynthesize under the redder light of M-dwarf stars or beneath layers of attenuating material are prime models for photosynthesis on other worlds. A robust, multi-method validated framework for detecting FRLCyano in the environment, as this study delivers, is a prerequisite for understanding how widely this expanded form of photosynthesis is deployed across Earth’s biosphere. By showing that a curated 16S rRNA gene database, validated against apcE2 and chlorophyll f, can reliably census these organisms, the Taiwanese team has given the field a scalable tool, and by pinning down pH and temperature as key correlates, they have told future explorers exactly where to look next.

Subject of Research: Ecological distribution and environmental drivers of far-red light-utilizing cyanobacteria in hot spring ecosystems

Article Title: Ecological Distribution and Environmental Correlates of Far-red Light-utilizing Cyanobacteria in Taiwan’s Hot Springs

Article References: Li, Y.-Y., Ko, J.-T., Chen, P.-Y., Chen, T.-L., Liu, P.-Y., & Ho, M.-Y. (2026). Ecological Distribution and Environmental Correlates of Far-red Light-utilizing Cyanobacteria in Taiwan’s Hot Springs. Microbial Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-026-02873-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00248-026-02873-5

Keywords: cyanobacteria, far-red light, chlorophyll f, FaRLiP, hot springs, 16S rRNA gene, FRCI database, apcE2, biogeography, Taiwan, Chroococcidiopsis, microbial ecology