Radioisotopic tracing of carbon monoxide conversion by anaerobic thermophilic prokaryotes

Abstract

The rate of CO conversion by a pure culture of a thermophilic CO-oxidizing, H2-producing bacterium Carboxydocella sp. strain 1503 was determined by the radioisotopic method. The overall daily uptake of 14CO by the bacterium was estimated at 38–56 μmol CO per 1 ml of the culture. A radioisotopic method was developed to separate and quantitatively determine the products of anaerobic CO conversion by microbial communities in hot springs. The new method was first tested on the microbial community from a sample obtained from a hot spring in Kamchatka. The potential rate of CO conversion by the anaerobic microbial community was found to be 40.75 nmol CO/cm3 sediment per day. 85% of the utilized 14CO was oxidized to carbon dioxide; 14.5% was incorporated into dissolved organic matter, including 0.2% that went into volatile fatty acids; 0.5% was used for cell biomass production; and only just over 0.001% was converted to methane.