Introduction and History of Alkaliphiles
Why Did I Study Alkaliphiles?
In 1956, I encountered an alkaliphilic bacterium, although not alkaliphilic in the true sense of the word. I was a graduate student in the Department of Agricultural Chemistry, University of Tokyo, working on autolysis of Aspergillus oryzae, which was the research theme for my doctoral thesis.
One day in November, I found one cultivation flask in which mycelia of Asp. oryzae was completely disappeared. Last night when I saw flasks, the mold flourished in all culture flasks. I still remembered spectacular pictures of how bacteria thrived and vividly moved. No mycelium could be seen under microscope.
The microorganism isolated from the flask was Bacillus circulans and strong endo-1,3-β-glucanase activity was detected in the culture fluid. This enzyme lyzed Asp. oryzae. It was the first time that mold cells had been found to be lyzed by bacteria and these results were published in Nature (Horikoshi and Iida 1958)....
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Horikoshi, K. (2011). Introduction and History of Alkaliphiles. In: Horikoshi, K. (eds) Extremophiles Handbook. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-53898-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-53898-1_2
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