identifier: traitmech:000186
label: siderophore production
definition: A physiological trait in which bacteria biosynthesize and release siderophores
  that scavenge extracellular iron for uptake.
definition_source: DOI:10.1111/1462-2920.14937
trait_category: PHYSIOLOGY
term_kind: CLASS
mapping_status: PROPOSED
parent_traits:
- METPO:1000059
evidence:
- reference: DOI:10.1111/1462-2920.14937
  snippet: Siderophores are iron-chelating molecules produced by bacteria to access
    iron, a key nutrient.
  notes: Schalk et al. define bacterial siderophores as produced iron-chelating molecules
    that enable iron access.
- reference: DOI:10.1111/1462-2920.14937
  snippet: They are released by bacteria into their environment to scavenge iron and
    bring it back into the cells.
  notes: The same review supports the release, extracellular scavenging, and uptake
    clauses in the local definition.
- reference: DOI:10.15698/mic2018.10.649
  snippet: Pyoverdines are fluorescent siderophores of pseudomonads that play important
    roles for growth under iron-limiting conditions.
  notes: Ringel and Bruser support pyoverdine production as a fluorescent-pseudomonad
    siderophore-production subtype.
- reference: DOI:10.1073/pnas.0908760106
  snippet: The siderophore pyoverdine (PVD) is a primary virulence factor of the human
    pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa
  notes: Imperi et al. support Pseudomonas aeruginosa as a pyoverdine-producing bacterium.
canonical_examples:
- taxon_id: NCBITaxon:287
  taxon_label: Pseudomonas aeruginosa
  note: Pseudomonas aeruginosa is used as a canonical pyoverdine-producing bacterium.
  reference: DOI:10.1073/pnas.0908760106
discussions:
- discussion_id: siderophore-production-xref-gap
  prompt: Resolve exact external ontology xrefs for the bacterial siderophore production
    phenotype.
  kind: CURATION_TODO
  status: OPEN
  rationale: The pinned METPO snapshot contains only METPO:1000277 obsolete siderophore.
    GO:0019290 is limited to the siderophore biosynthetic process, GO:0015891 is a
    siderophore transport process, and CHEBI:26672 denotes the siderophore molecule
    rather than the organism-level biosynthesis-and-release trait.
  posed_by: codex
  posed_date: '2026-09-14'
curation_history:
- timestamp: '2026-09-14T18:32:00Z'
  curator: codex
  action: MINTED_TRAITMECH_ID
  changes: Minted siderophore production as a DOI-backed TraitRecord after a repository-wide
    duplicate review covering ignored and hidden files; METPO has only an obsolete
    siderophore class in the local snapshot and the replacement placeholder is reserved
    in proposals/metpo_traitmech_v63.
  llm_assisted: true