Oxidation of Octanoic Acid by Cell-free Bacterial Extracts

Abstract

STUDIES with extracts from the anaerobic organism Clostridium kluyveri have shown that certain fatty acids are oxidized to acetate by processes similar in essentials to those in mammalian systems¹ ; but the mechanisms employed by aerobic bacteria have remained obscure. Thus, although results with whole cells of Serratia marcescens² did not apparently accord with β-oxidation, it has been shown more recently that extracts from Pseudomonas fluorescens³ catalyse the formation of acetate from decanoate with the uptake of one micromole of oxygen per micromole of substrate. In experiments with cell-free extracts prepared from a vibrio⁴, we have now been able to show that octanoic acid is oxidized by molecular oxygen to 2C units ; that diphosphopyridine nucleotide, coenzyme A and magnesium ions are co-factors in this process ; and that subsequent oxidation is by way of the tricarboxylic acid cycle.