majority of lithotrophs fix carbon dioxide through the Calvin cycle, an energetically expensive process. For some low-energy substrates, such as ferrous iron, the cells must cull through large amounts of inorganic substrate to secure just a small amount of energy. This makes their metabolic process inefficient in many places and hinders them from thriving.

Overview of the metabolic process

There is a fairly large variation in the types of inorganic substrates that these microorganisms

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