ELECTRON DONORS AND COFAGTORS FOR DENITRIFIGATION BY PSEUDOMONAS PERFECTOMARINUS

Abstract
Pseudomonas perfectomarinus released nitrogen fiom nitrate in media containing a variety of amino acids, pyruvate, or urea, but only if these minimal media were supplemented with glucose or, preferably, citrate. L-Arabinose (and to a lesser degree, D-arabinose) served as electron donor in combination with glucose or citrate, whereas other sugars did not. Asparagine, however, was the most effective oxidizable substrate tested and was the only test compound supporting denitrification without supplementary glucose or citrate. Mano-metric experiments revealed that adapted resting cells liberated nitrogen very rapidly with asparagine but less rapidly with citrate. Furthermore, cell-free extracts of adapted bacteria denitrified nitrate when provided with these substrates. Flavine mononucleotide was more effective as a stimulatory cofactor for denitrification than flavine adenine dinucleotide in whole-cell experiments, but not with cell-free extracts. Experiments with dialyzed cell-free extracts revealed that the enzymes which oxidized asparagine and citrate (or actually isocitrate) were linked with triphosphopyridine nucleotide. Additional experiments with cell-free extracts revealed that oxidation of reduced triphosphopyridine nucleotide was enzymatically linked with flavine mononucleotide.

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