1. When the glucose grown, resting cells of
Brevibacterium flavum were incubated with acetate-2-C
14 for various periods of time, C
14 from acetate rapidly appeared in citrate, α-ketoglutarate, succinate, malate, glutamate, and aspartate as revealed by the two-dimen-sional chromatography and radioautography of the ethanol-soluble fractions obtained .from each sample of the suspension.
2. A method for kinetic analysis of the incorporation of labelled atom of a substrate into the metabolites was described in order to determine the metabolic pathway
in vivo. When the percentage distribution of C
14 among several particularly selected groups of the compounds was plotted against time, in order to determine the path of acetate metabolism, following reaction sequences were .obtained, in due consideration of the biochecal characteristics of the compounds concerned: acetate, malate, succinate, α-ketoglu-tarate, glutamate; malate, aspartate; succinate, citrate.
3. The present results indicate the operation of the modified TCA cycle with an additional “glyoxylate by-pass”
in vivo, which has been postulated from the results
in vitro for the glutamate formation from acetate.
The authors are indebted to Prof. F. Egami and Prof. B. Maruo of the University of Tokyo, and Dr. H. Oeda and Mr. S. Motozaki of our laboratory for the helpful discussion and encouragement during the course of this work. The authors wish also to thank Dr. T. Yamada of the University of Tokyo for the helpful advices and discussion on the kinetic analysis.
View full abstract