Oxidation of ammonia and urea (heterotrophic nitrification) by Streptomyces nitrificans
✍ Scribed by Schatz, Albert ;Mohan, R. Ram
- Publisher
- Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
- Year
- 1955
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 571 KB
- Volume
- 45
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0095-9898
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✦ Synopsis
Bltcks Coimty, Pennsglvunia
TWO FIGURES
Since the classical work of Winogradsky (1890Winogradsky ( , 1891)), nitrification has generally been considered to be restricted to the obligately chemoautotrophic Nitrobacterieae despite reports which indicate that some heterotrophic organisms may also nitrify. Heterotrophic bacteria (Devignat, '52 ; Fisher et al., '52; Hutton and Zobel, '53; Karlson, '54), actinoniycetes (Rebstock et al., '49; Isenbei-g et al., '54; Hirata et al., '54), and molds (Bush et al., '51 ; Schmidt, '54) produce nitrite, nitrate, and organic nitro compounds from ammonia, urea, guanidine, carbamates, amino acids, proteins, etc. I n addition, the production of hydroxylamine (Steinberg, '39) and oxirries (Virtanen et al., '49) from reduced nitrogen may not be uncommon among heterotrophs. Aside from these kinds of oxidative nitrification, many heterotrophic organisms hydrolyze oximes to nitrite (Quastcl and Scholefield, '49; Jcnsen, '51; Quastel e t al., '52). The Nitrobacterieae do not carry out this rcaction which, in contrast to the oxidation of ammonia, is probably not exergonic ( Quastel and Scholefield, '49 ; ,Jcnsen, '50).
Oxime hydrolysis occurs rapidly and thc organisms which nitrify in this manner are easily cultured. Consequently, a study of this process has recently been proposed as a convenient approach to the general problem of nitrification by the