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The Dissimilation of Amino Acids by Rhodospirillum rubrum
Abstract
Summary: Washed suspensions of a strain of Rhodospirillum rubrum S1 grown anaerobically in the light and incubated in the light under argon metabolized many of the 15 amino acids tested and produced ammonia and carbon dioxide as the principal extracellular products. Hydrogen was also produced in the presence of glutamic acid. Of the glutamic acid metabolized 80 % of the carbon and 55–70% of the nitrogen were converted into intracellular products. The magnitude of the catabolism of the other amino acids, as measured by ammonia and carbon dioxide production, appears to be an inverse function of the closeness to which the elemental composition of the amino acid approximates to that of cell material.
When the organism was grown aerobically in the dark, studies of the metabolism of amino acids by washed suspensions, under aerobic conditions, were complicated by the relatively high rate of endogenous respiration. In the presence of certain amino acids this was decreased by 9 % (with alanine) to 45 % (with aspartic acid), and glutamic acid, aspartic acid and alanine, at least, were oxidized to completion by the organism.
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© Society for General Microbiology, 1956