Trimethylamine oxide, which is found in relatively high concentrations in the tissues of marine animals, serves as an electron acceptor in the anaerobic metabolism of a number of bacteria associated primarily with three environments: the marine environment (e.g. Alteromonas and Vibrio), the brackish pond (nonsulfur photosynthetic bacteria), and animal intestines (Enterobacteriaceae). Its reduction to trimethylamine by such bacteria can constitute a major spoilage reaction during the storage of marine fish. In the Enterobacteriaceae, anaerobic respiration with TMAO has been shown to support oxidative phosphorylation. Electron transport to TMAO in these bacteria involves flavin nucleotides, menaquinones, both b- and c-type cytochromes, and a molybdoenzyme reductase. Formate, hydrogen, lactate, and glycerol all serve as electron donors for TMAO respiration. Electrophoretically distinct constitutive and TMAO-induced reductases are synthesized by both E. coli and S. typhimurium. Electron transport to TMAO is repressed both by air and by nitrate. A number of genes involved in TMAO respiration have been mapped, but the structural gene for the inducible TMAO reductase has not yet been firmly established. Oxidative phosphorylation is also supported by TMAO reduction in Alteromonas. In this organism, which is nonfermentative, TMAO respiration resembles aerobic respiration in that intermediates of the TCA cycle are excellent electron donors. Alteromonas exhibits a requirement for NaCl for growth on TMAO and certain electron donors. As in the Enterobacteriaceae, air and nitrate both interfere with TMAO reduction. The role of TMAO reduction in the anaerobic metabolism of nonsulfur purple bacteria has not yet been resolved; it is not clear if TMAO serves simply as an accessory oxidant for fermentation or if TMAO reduction is associated with energy-yielding membrane-bound electron transport. Some of the confusion regarding this bacterial group stems from the fact that much of the work to date has involved parallel studies of TMAO and dimethyl sulfoxide reduction, and it is not yet known whether the two compounds are reduced by the same enzyme. Although our understanding of bacterial TMAO reduction lags far behind our knowledge of bacterial nitrate reduction, it is unlikely that this will always be the case.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

The phs chromosomal locus of Salmonella typhimurium is essential for the dissimilatory anaerobic reduction of thiosulfate to hydrogen sulfide. Sequence analysis of the phs region revealed a functional operon with three open reading frames, designated phsA, phsB, and phsC, which encode peptides of 82.7, 21.3, and 28.5 kDa, respectively. The predicted products of phsA and phsB exhibited significant homology with the catalytic and electron transfer subunits of several other anaerobic molybdoprotein oxidoreductases, including Escherichia coli dimethyl sulfoxide reductase, nitrate reductase, and formate dehydrogenase. Simultaneous comparison of PhsA to seven homologous molybdoproteins revealed numerous similarities among all eight throughout the entire frame, hence, significant amino acid conservation among molybdoprotein oxidoreductases. Comparison of PhsB to six other homologous sequences revealed four highly conserved iron-sulfur clusters. The predicted phsC product was highly hydrophobic and similar in size to the hydrophobic subunits of the molybdoprotein oxidoreductases containing subunits homologous to phsA and phsB. Thus, phsABC appears to encode thiosulfate reductase. Single-copy phs-lac translational fusions required both anaerobiosis and thiosulfate for full expression, whereas multicopy phs-lac translational fusions responded to either thiosulfate or anaerobiosis, suggesting that oxygen and thiosulfate control of phs involves negative regulation. A possible role for thiosulfate reduction in anaerobic respiration was examined. Thiosulfate did not significantly augment the final densities of anaerobic cultures grown on any of the 18 carbon sources tested. On the other hand, washed stationary-phase cells depleted of ATP were shown to synthesize small amounts of ATP on the addition of formate and thiosulfate, suggesting that thiosulfate reduction plays a unique role in anaerobic energy conservation by S. typhimurium.

A chromosomal locus of SalmoneUa typhimurium which complements S. typhimurium asr (anaerobic sulfite reduction) mutants and confers on Escherichia coli the ability to produce hydrogen sulfide from sulfite was recently cloned (C. J. Huang and E. L. Barrett, J. Bacteriol. 172:4100-4102, 1990). The DNA sequence and the transcription start site have been determined. Analysis of the sequence and gene products revealed a functional operon containing three genes which have been designated asrA, asrB, and asrC, encoding peptides of 40, 31, and 37 kDa, respectively. The predicted amino acid sequences of both asrA and asiC contained arrangements of cysteines characteristic of ferredoxins. The sequence of asrB contained a typical nucleotide-binding region. The sequence of asrC contained, in addition to the ferredoxinlike cysteine clusters, two other cysteine clusters closely resembling the proposed siroheme-binding site in biosynthetic sulfite reductase. Expression of lacZ fused to the asr promoter was repressed by oxygen and induced by sulfite.Analysis of promoter deletions revealed a region specific for sulfite regulation and a second region required for anaerobic expression. Computer-assisted DNA sequence analysis revealed a site just upstream of the first open reading frame which had significant homology to the FNR protein-binding site of E. coi NADH-linked nitrite reductase. However, asr expression by the fusion plasmid was not affected by site-specific mutations within the apparent FNR-binding site.The reduction of sulfite to sulfide by electrons from hydrogen or an organic substrate constitutes the central energy-conserving step in the metabolism of the sulfatereducing bacteria (37). Outside this group, dissimilatory sulfite reduction is rare. However, many microorganisms, including members of the Enterobacteriaceae family, assimilate sulfate by means of a cysteine biosynthetic pathway in which sulfite reduction is a step (30). The biosynthetic sulfite reductase in Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium consists of a flavoprotein, encoded by cysJ, and a hemoprotein, encoded by cysI (30,38,40,51). In both the dissimilatory pathway of the sulfate reducers and the assimilatory pathway of the Enterobacteriaceae, siroheme and ironsulfur clusters are required participants (36,40). Siroheme biosynthesis is encoded by the cysG gene in E. coli and S. typhimurium (27). Mutations in cysI, cysJ, or cysG all result in cysteine auxotrophy.S. typhimurium differs from E. coli in two aspects of sulfite reduction. Firstly, it produces significant quantities of free hydrogen sulfide from sulfite, a property which, among the Enterobacteriaceae, is unique to the genera Salmonella and Edwardsiella (2, 41). Our studies of H2S production from sulfite by S. typhimurium have shown that it is strictly anaerobic (21), genetically distinct from its biosynthetic analog (21, 24), linked to NADH rather than NADPH oxidation (21), and regulated by available electron acceptors rather than by cysteine (6, 21, 24). Thus, it is essentially a dissi...

Salmonella typhimurium produces H2S from thiosulfate or sulfite. The respective pathways for the two reductions must be distinct as mutants carrying motations in phs, chi, and menB reduced sulfite, but not thiosulfate, to H2S, and glucose repressed the production of H2S from thiosulfate while it stimulated its production from sulfite.

We have designed a new medium for the differentiation of mutants of Salmonella typhimurium defective in the ability to reduce nitrate with formate, and have characterized 24 formate dehydrogenase (FDH) mutants isolated on this medium. The mutants were assayed for the ability to use formate to reduce benzyl viologen and phenazine methosulfate, and were mapped by means of conjugation and P22-mediated transduction. Mutants lacking the ability to reduce either dye were found to map at three distinct sites: at a site co-transducible with xyl (presumably fdhA), at a site or sites between 13U and 33U, but not co-transducible with aroA, bio, purB, pyrC, or pyrD (near, but not identical with fdhB), and at asite 10-20% co-transducible with pyrE, for which we suggest the designation fdhC. Six mutant isolates reduced benzyl viologen, but not phenazine methosulfate. They retained the ability to produce nitrite during growth with nitrate. They mapped between 83U and 89U, but no co-transduction was found with metE, glnA, metB, or argH. The combined biochemical and genetic data suggest the existence of a gene in this area which is essential for the reduction of nitrate with formate, but not for formate hydrogenlyase activity or for nitrate reductase activity.

Mutants of Salmonella typhimurium that lack the biosynthetic sulfite reductase (cysI and cysJ mutants) retain the ability to reduce sulfite for growth under anaerobic conditions (E. L. Barrett and G. W. Chang, J. Gen. Microbiol., 115:513-516, 1979). Here we report studies of sulfite reduction by a cysI mutant of S. typhimurium and purification of the associated anaerobic sulfite reductase. Sulfite reduction for anaerobic growth did not require a reducing atmosphere but was prevented by an argon atmosphere contaminated with air (<0.33%). It was also prevented by the presence of 0.1 mM nitrate, which argues against a strictly biosynthetic role for anaerobic sulfite reduction. Anaerobic growth in liquid minimal medium, but not on agar, was found to require additions of trace amounts (lo-7 M) of cysteine. Spontaneous mutants that grew under the argon contaminated with air also lost the requirement for 10-7 M cysteine for anaerobic growth in liquid. A role for sulfite reduction in anaerobic energy generation was contraindicated by the findings that sulfite reduction did not improve cell yields, and anaerobic sulfite reductase activity was greatest during the stationary phase of growth. Sulfite reductase was purified from the cytoplasmic fraction of the anaerobically grown cysI mutant and was purified 190-fold. The most effective donor in crude extracts was NADH. NADPH and methyl viologen were, respectively, 40 and 30% as effective as NADH. Oxygen reversibly inhibited the enzyme. Two highmolecular-weight proteins separated by gel filtration (Mr 360,000 and 490,000, respectively) were required for maximal activity with NADH. Indirect evidence, including in vitro complementation experiments with a cysG mutant extract, suggested that the 3609000-Mr component contains siroheme and is the terminal reductase.This component was further purified to near homogeneity and was found to consist of a single subunit of molecular weight 67,500. The anaerobic sulfite reductase showed some resemblance to the biosynthetic sulfite reductase, but apparently it has a unique, as yet unidentified function.Although much is known about sulfite reduction by the sulfate-reducing bacteria (1, 23, 28), very little is known about the anaerobic production of H2S from sulfite by members of the family Enterobacteriaceae. The ability to perform this reaction is routinely used in diagnostic laboratories to differentiate Salmonella species (H2S positive) from Escherichia coli (H2S negative). We have hypothesized that the enzymes involved may explain the observation that cysI and cysJ (biosynthetic sulfite reductase) mutants of S. typhimurium behave as prototrophs under anaerobic conditions (2), whereas E. coli cysI and cysJ mutants are auxotrophs under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions (E. L. Barrett, unpublished findings). Like E. coli, S. typhimurium mutants defective in cysG, which is required for synthesis of the siroheme prosthetic group (25), do not produce H2S from sulfite and do not behave as prototrophs under anaerobic growth conditions. The...

The effect of pH in the range 5.0 to 7.0 on the thermal destruction of spores of Clostridium sporogenes putrefactive anaerobe 3679 was examined by three methods: a capillary tube method in which spores were suspended in phosphate buffers, a thermoresistometer method in which spores were suspended in buffered pea puree adjusted to the same set of pH values, and a thermal death time can method in which spores were again suspended in buffered pea puree. The results indicated that increasing acidity is, in general, accompanied by decreasing heat resistance, although the pH effect was more pronounced at the higher than at the lower processing temperatures. Certain pH values appear to be critical, as they produced, in all three sets of experiments, effects which would not be predicted by the overall relationship between acidity and spore heat resistance. Differences between heat resistance in phosphate buffer as compared with that in pea puree adjusted to the same pH were also noted. D-values in buffer were found to be lower than those in pea puree, except at the highest temperatures coupled with the lowest pH values. The differences between buffer D-value and pea puree Dvalue were found to increase with increasing pH and with decreasing temperature. On the other hand, at all pH values examined, z-values determined in buffer were somewhat higher than those determined in pea puree adjusted to the same pH.

A numerical taxonomic analysis was performed to evaluate the appropriateness of a single biovar designation (biovar V) for all Pseudomonas fluorescens isolates negative for denitrification, levan production and phenazine pigmentation and to determine the relationship of biovar V strains to other taxa within the same Pseudomonas RNA homology group. Seventy-two strains assigned to P. fluorescens biovar V and four strains of P. fragi were characterized and the data subjected to a numerical taxonomic analysis along with comparable data for 17 previously characterized strains of this biovar and 89 P. putida strains. Seven distinct biovar V clusters containing three or more strains were revealed, and the carbon sources useful for their differentiation were identified. Cluster 1 (38 strains) closely resembled two atypical P. fluorescens I strains. It was also related to P. fluorescens biovar IV and to P. fragi. Cluster 2 (5 strains) was related to cluster 1. Cluster 3 (7 strains) was identical to a major group of meat spoilage psychrotrophic pseudomonads (P. lundensis). Cluster 4 (3 strains) was not related to any other group examined. Cluster 5 consisted of six isolates initially designated P. putida A along with four P. fluorescens biovar V strains all of which resembled P. putida more than they resembled the other P. fluorescens groups. Cluster 6 (16 strains) was distinct from the other biovar V clusters, but was closely related to P. fluorescens biovars I and II. Cluster 7 (3 strains) shared many characteristics with cluster 5. Separate P. fluorescens biovar designations are proposed for cluster 6 and for the combined clusters 1 and 2. A new P. putida biovar is proposed for the combined clusters 5 and 7.