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Volume 131, Issue 6

Isolation and Properties of Mutants of Defective in Aerobic Nitrogen Fixation Free

Abstract

Mutants of which showed unusually O-sensitive N fixation when grown on sugars were isolated following mutagenesis with nitrosoguanidine or the transposon Tm. These mutants we called Fos (inability to fix N on sugars). Aerotolerant growth of Fos mutants was, in general, restored by carboxylic acids, Ca or a combined-N source. Two main groups of mutants were distinguished: (1) regulatory mutants which failed to synthesize nitrogenase under aerobic conditions and which were complemented by the gene product; (2) mutants affected at different steps in intermediary metabolism. The latter strains exhibited low respiration rates or high apparent (O) values (when grown on sucrose) compared with the parent strain. They seemed to be defective in respiratory protection of nitrogenase. The restoration of aerotolerant N-dependent growth of Fos mutants by carboxylic acids was correlated with their ability to induce a decrease in the apparent (O) value; however, in both the mutant and the parent strains maximum respiration rates did not change significantly. The Ca requirement for diazotrophic growth in . seems to be related to the capability of these organisms to fix N in air. Ca might be required for high fluxes in the tricarboxylic acid cycle and might act at the level of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase, which is involved in the replenishment of the tricarboxylic acid cycle and/or at the level of tricarboxylic acid cycle enzymes . It is suggested that respiratory protection requires the maintenance of high respiratory rates even at low O tension.

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© Society for General Microbiology 1985
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1985-06-01
2024-04-25
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Isolation and Properties of Mutants of Azotobacter chroococcum Defective in Aerobic Nitrogen Fixation
Microbiology 131, 1449 (1985); https://doi.org/10.1099/00221287-131-6-1449
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/00221287-131-6-1449
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/00221287-131-6-1449
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