Abstract
A new species of anaerobic bacterium that degrades the even-numbered carbon fatty acids, butyrate, caproate and caprylate, to acetate and H2 and the odd-numbered carbon fatty acids, valerate and heptanoate, to acetate, propionate and H2 was obtained in coculture with either an H2-utilizing methanogen or H2-utilizing desulfovibrio. The organism could be grown only in syntrophic association with the H2-utilizer and no other energy sources or combination of electron donor and acceptors were utilized. It was a Gram-negative helical rod with 2 to 8 flagella, about 20 nm in diameter, inserted in a linear fashion about 130 nm or more apart along the concave side of the cell. It grew with a generation time of 84 h in co-culture with Methanospirillum hungatii and was present in numbers of at least 4.5×10-6 per g of anaerobic digestor sludge.
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McInerney, M.J., Bryant, M.P. & Pfennig, N. Anaerobic bacterium that degrades fatty acids in syntrophic association with methanogens. Arch. Microbiol. 122, 129–135 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00411351
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00411351