Eubacterium Acidaminophilum, an Organism Able to Interact in Interspecies H-Transfer Reactions or to Transfer Electrons to Different Terminal Reductase Systems

Abstract

Eubacterium acidaminophilum is an acetate forming anaerobe utilizing a variety of amino acids whose utilization mostly requires the addition of an oxidant such as sarcosine or betaine or of H₂-scavenging organisms as methanogenic, sulfidogenic, or acetogenic bacteria. Although all enzymes required for acetate synthesis from CO₂ via glycine (Dürre and Andreesen 1982) are present in crude extracts and CO₂ can be reduced to formate, the organism does not grow autotrophically nor on formate as C₁-compound, but it grows excellent on glycine and has to synthesize glycine from CO₂ in most cases due to the lack of serine hydroxymethyltransferase (Zindel et al. 1988).