METABOLIC CHARACTERIZATION OF THE GENUS BRUCELLA I.

ABSTRACT

Meyer, Margaret E. (University of California, Davis), and H. S. Cameron. Metabolic characterization of the genus Brucella. I. Statistical evaluation of the oxidative rates by which type I of each species can be identified. J. Bacteriol. 82:387–395. 1961.—The oxidative uptake rates on 11 amino acid and seven carbohydrate substrates were determined for 75 strains of brucellae that had been identified by the conventional determinative methods as Brucella melitensis type I, Brucella abortus type I, or Brucella suis type I. By calculating the standard deviation of the oxidative rates, it was demonstrated that a metabolic pattern that is characteristic and definitive for each of the species was formed by their differential oxidative utilization of substrate groups, and that qualitative as well as quantitative metabolic differences exist among the Brucella species. B. melitensis oxidized l-alanine, l-asparagine, and l-glutamic acid, but not l-arginine, dl-citrulline, l-lysine, dl-ornithine, l-arabinose, d-galactose, d-ribose, or d-xylose. B. abortus differed qualitatively from B. melitensis in that it oxidized the carbohydrate substrates. B. suis differed quantitatively from both of these species in its consistently low oxidative rates of l-alanine, l-asparagine, and l-glutamic acid, and its high rates of utilization of the carbohydrate substrates. It differed qualitatively in that it oxidized the four amino acid substrates that are components of the urea cycle.