Photoorganotrophic growth of a blue-green alga, Anabaena variabilis

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Abstract
By training Anabaena variabilis in the presence of glucose and casamino acids, the cells became proliferable without a supply of CO2. Their growth under these conditions was not affected by CMU and their growth rates were linearly proportional to the light intensity, inferring that this growth was independent of photosystem II action and its nutritional mode was of photoorganotrophic nature. The process of transition to this nutritional mode included at least two consecutive stages: relief from the susceptibility to organic substances which initially evoked arrest of cell growth, followed by the shift of cellular metabolism to organotrophy. In cells grown photoorganotrophically, the contents of phycobilin pigments decreased to nearly one-fifth as much as that of lithotrophically grown cells with concomitant degradation of the activity of photosynthetic oxygen evolution, while the chlorophyll contents remained less altered. Accompanying these results, the activity for incorporating external amino acids into cellular proteins was enhanced several hundred times. Neither in the dark nor in anaerobiosis was this organotrophic growth permitted but when light too dim to support lithotrophic growth was supplied, the organotrophic growth was affected at a slow but discernible rate.

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