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J Bacteriol. 1970 October; 104(1): 351–359.
PMCID: PMC248221
Metabolic Influences on Tyrosine Excretion in Bacillus subtilis1
W. Scott Champney2 and Roy A. Jensen
Department of Biology, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14214
Department of Microbiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77025
2 Present address: Department of Microbiology, University of Illinois, Urbana, Ill. 61801.
1 Presented in part at the 69th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, Miami Beach, Fla., 4–9 May 1969.
Abstract
The biosynthetic pathway for tyrosine synthesis is regulated both by repression of enzyme synthesis and by feedback inhibition of enzyme activity in Bacillus subtilis. Nevertheless, wild-type cells produce significantly more tyrosine than is required for protein synthesis, and part of this is excreted into the medium. Alteration of nutritional and other environmental conditions of cultivation strongly influenced the amount of tyrosine excretion. The excretion of tyrosine by wild-type cells was compared with that of a regulatory mutant having a feedback-insensitive prephenate dehydrogenase. Tyrosine excretion varied directly with the in vitro activity of prephenate dehydrogenase and inversely with temperature in the two strains. The regulatory mutant excreted five times as much tyrosine as the wild type at all growth temperatures examined. The carbon source used for growth significantly influenced the level of tyrosine excretion. The specific activity of prephenate dehydrogenase was also affected by the carbon source. Incorporation studies with isotopic tyrosine and fluorometric determinations of tyrosine concentrations extractable in hot water were used to measure operationally the tyrosine pools in the mutant and wild-type strains. The effects of various environmental conditions on the synthesis and excretion of tyrosine led to the conclusion that metabolic controls governing end product contrations exist which are completely independent of regulation by feedback inhibition and repression.
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Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
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