THE METABOLISM OF CYSTINE AND CYSTEINE BY PROTEUS VULGARIS AND PROTEUS MORGANII
Abstract
Receive: RSS Feeds, eTOCs, free email alerts (when new articles cite this article), more» Information about commercial reprint orders: http://jb.asm.org/site/misc/reprints.xhtml To subscribe to to another ASM Journal go to: http://journals.asm.org/site/subscriptions/ KALLIO AND J. R. PORTER Department of Bacteriology, College of Medicine, The State University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa Received for publication July 31, 1950 The microbial degradation of cystine and cysteine was first quantitatively investigated by Tarr (1933), who concluded after using Proteus vulgaris that cystine is reduced to cysteine, the latter then being anaerobically dissimilated to acetate, formate, hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia. Desnuelle and Fromageot in a series of studies (Desnuelle and Fromageot, 1939; Desnuelle, 1939; Desnuelle et al., 1940) observed a system in Escherichia coli and Proprionibacterium pentosaceum that liberated hydrogen sulfide and ammonia from cysteine. The system in E. coli was partially adaptive, whereas in P. pentosaceum the enzyme was found to be constitutive in character. For each mole of cysteine utilized by these organisms one of ammonia and one of hydrogen sulfide were produced. Pyruvate accumulated in the presence of carbonyl reagent, but little quantitative data on this aspect of the problem was presented. Smythe (1941) studied a system in mammalian liver that