Effect of community structure on the kinetics of anaerobic degradation of aromatic compounds. Progress report, March 1989--June 1991

摘要

The physiology of fatty acid metabolism and the kinetics of benzoate degradation by anaerobic syntrophic bacteria were studied. We have shown that: a threshold for benzoate degradation by a syntrophic coculture of Syntrophus buswellii and Desulfovibrio strain G11 exists and the value of the threshold depends on the amount of benzoate and acetate suggesting a thermodynamic limitation. Syntrophomonas wolfei has the enzymatic ability to produce formate and that low levels of formate are made during growth in pure culture with crotonate or in coculture with butyrate. However, the high specific activities of hydrogenase compared to formate dehydrogenase indicate that hydrogen rather than formate is the intermediate involved in the interspecies transfer of reducing equivalents. We have isolated Syntrophus buswellii and a novel anaerobic bacteria that catalyzes an aryl-ether cleavage reaction using crotonate as the energy source. Several novel obligately halophilic anaerobes from hypersaline oil reservoir brines were isolated and characterized. Two of these degraded pyrogallate with the production of acetate. We have shown that S. wolfei synthesizes poly-(beta)hydroxyalkanoate (PHA) by two routes, directly from a (beta)-oxidation intermediate without cleaving a C-C bond and by the condensation of two acetyl-CoA molecules. The formation of D-3-hydroxyacyl-CoA needed for PHA synthesis occurs by the activity of a acetoacetyl-CoA reductase rather than a enoyl-CoA hydratase. The genes for PHA synthesis in S. wolfei have been cloned into Escherichia coli.