identifier: traitmech:000199
label: trimethylamine N-oxide respiration
definition: An anaerobic respiration in which an organism uses trimethylamine N-oxide
  as the terminal electron acceptor and reduces it to trimethylamine for energy conservation.
definition_source: DOI:10.1111/1462-2920.12726
trait_category: METABOLISM
term_kind: CLASS
mapping_status: PROPOSED
parent_traits:
- METPO:1000802
synonyms:
- synonym_text: TMAO respiration
  synonym_type: EXACT_SYNONYM
  source: DOI:10.3389/fmicb.2024.1467153
evidence:
- reference: DOI:10.1111/1462-2920.12726
  snippet: anaerobic respiratory growth with trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) as the
    terminal electron acceptor
  notes: Denby et al. support TMAO as the organism-level terminal electron acceptor
    for anaerobic respiratory growth.
- reference: DOI:10.1111/1462-2920.12726
  snippet: TMAO is reduced to TMA by the enzyme TMAO reductase, encoded by the torCAD
    operon
  notes: Denby et al. describe reduction of trimethylamine N-oxide to trimethylamine
    by the TorCAD-linked TMAO reductase.
- reference: DOI:10.3389/fmicb.2024.1467153
  snippet: switching from aerobic intracellular energy metabolism to trimethylamine
    N-oxide respiration
  notes: Qiu and Tang use the unabbreviated respiration label while linking high-pressure
    survival in Shewanella eurypsychrophilus YLB-09 to TMAO respiration.
canonical_examples:
- taxon_id: NCBITaxon:83333
  taxon_label: Escherichia coli K-12
  note: Denby et al. characterized E. coli K-12 MG1655 adaptation from anaerobic fermentative
    growth to a TMAO-respiratory/fermentative steady state after TMAO addition.
  reference: DOI:10.1111/1462-2920.12726
discussions:
- discussion_id: trimethylamine-n-oxide-respiration-xref-gap
  prompt: Resolve an exact external ontology class for organism-level trimethylamine
    N-oxide respiration before adding a TraitRecord xref.
  kind: CURATION_TODO
  status: OPEN
  rationale: The pinned METPO snapshot has no active organism-level class for trimethylamine
    N-oxide respiration. Candidate EC, Rhea, and protein-family terms for TorA or
    broader trimethylamine N-oxide reductases are narrower than the whole-organism
    anaerobic respiration phenotype.
  posed_by: codex
  posed_date: '2026-09-15'
curation_history:
- timestamp: '2026-09-15T02:00:15Z'
  curator: codex
  action: MINTED_TRAITMECH_ID
  changes: Minted trimethylamine N-oxide respiration as a DOI-backed anaerobic respiration
    TraitRecord with an exact TMAO respiration synonym after a repository-wide duplicate
    review covering ignored and hidden files; the local METPO snapshot has no exact
    class and the replacement placeholder is reserved in proposals/metpo_traitmech_v76.
  llm_assisted: true