Pantothenate and Coenzyme A in Bacterial Growth

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Abstract
The effect of environmental pantothenate levels on the growth of Strepto -coccus faecalis 9790 was studied in terms of growth rate, depletion phenomena, cellular coenzyme A (CoA) content, and differential rates of wall and membrane synthesis. Low concentrations of pantothenate yielded normal exponential growth curves up to peak turbidities which are a function of pantothenate concentration. Attainment of these peaks was followed by lysis. Under such conditions, bacterial CoA increased initially in proportion with cell substance, but attained a peak level much earlier than cell substance, and then gradually decrease down to vanishing amounts. With higher pantothenate concentrations, cellular CoA levels increased to a maximum, and, under these conditions, the CoA content remained constant during exponential growth. Four-fifths of the pantothenate requirement of growing cells was eliminated by environmental oleate and palmitate. When CoA disappeared during growth on low pantothenate levels, cell wall syntehsis seemed to continue at nearly normal rates, but membrane synthesis was severely curtailed. The data suggested that in fermentative organisms pantothenate action might be confined to wall and membrane synthesis, that these two processes differed in their quantitative dependence on pantothenate, and that pantothenate might occur in the form of acyl carrier protein as well as CoA.