STUDIES ON THE METABOLISM OF PHOTOSYNTHETIC BACTERIA

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Abstract
It is known that molecular hydrogen can be formed as a major photosynthetic product by resting or growing cultures of Rhodospirillum rubrum (Gest and Kamen, 1949; Gest, Kamen, and Bregoff, 1950). In this paper are described further researches on this phenomenon not only as it occurs in R. rubrum but also in another representative of the Athiorhodaceae, a special strain of Rhodo-pseudomonas gelatinosa (Siegel and Kamen, 1950). With resting cells of this latter organism, conditions can be established whereby hydrogen is formed by the photometabolism of a much greater variety of compounds than originally appeared to be the case with R. rubrum. Furthermore, under similar conditions the list of substrates effective with R. rubrum can also be increased considerably. Hence it is concluded that the substrate specificity for photoproduction of hydrogen is of a low order with either organism. It appears that one factor of critical importance in the formation of hydrogen from illuminated suspensions is the concentration of bicarbonate or CO2. The effect of molecular nitrogen or ammoniu_ salts on the photometabolism of these bacteria has also been investigated further. The observations that nit

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