EXPERIMENTS WITH SOME MICROORGANISMS WHICH UTILIZE ETHANE AND HYDROGEN

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Abstract
From enrichment and selective cultures in which natural gas or ethane was the substrate, several bacteria and one filamentous fungus were isolated in pure culture. Despite a 15 to 1 molar preponderance of methane over ethane in the natural gas employed in these experiments, none of the isolates could grow with methane (99% pure) as the sole carbon source. Each did grow with ethane (88% pure) as the sole carbon source. Among the ethane utilizers, 4 different mycobacteria and a gram-negative coccus grew autotrophically with hydrogen as the sole source of energy. The ability of suspensions of washed cells to oxidize hydrogen was conditioned by the particular substrate on which the organisms were grown. Each of the hydrogen bacteria is a facultative autotroph. A possible relation between the ability of bacteria to utilize hydrocarbons and the ability to use hydrogen is pointed out. Problems in the taxonomy of hydrogen autotrophs are discussed and the unten-ability of the genus Hydrogenomonas outlined. A proposal to drop Hydrogenomonas in favor of Pseudomonas is made, together with the suggestion that most existing "species" of Hydrogenomonas are varieties of one or two species whose autotrophic nature should be designated in the species epithet.

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