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Abstract
SUMMARY: Evidence is presented that the distinction, already made on nutritional grounds, between lactaphilic and glycophilic strains of acetic acid bacteria may be traced back to the metabolic level. Thus, the capacity of cell extracts to effect reversible transamination from glutamate to aspartate was well developed in lactaphiles, but only feebly so, or not at all, in glycophiles. Again, suspensions of lactaphiles possessed greater general ability to oxidize intermediates of the tricarboxylic acid cycle than did those of glycophiles. Cell extracts of lactaphiles possessed citrogenase activity, which was not detected in glycophiles. The conversion of l-aspartate to α-alanine by extracts of lactaphiles appeared to proceed by β-decarboxylation, not by transamination.
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