Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the polymeric reserve materials and thus excludes the consideration of lipids other than poly-β-hydroxybutyrate, and the disaccharide trehalose, which plays an important role in the economy of the yeast cell, but displays certain features that are at variance with the normally accepted behavior of storage compounds. The chapter considers the evidence for the energy-storage roles of glycogen, polyphosphates and poly-p-hydroxybutyrate, and the current state of knowledge concerning the regulation of their biosynthesis and degradation in the microbial cell. The intracellular location of the enzymes concerned with polymer synthesis and degradation is an intriguing problem. The most detailed work has been carried out with PHB granules, which have PHB synthetase and a factor involved in depolymerase activity associated with the membrane that bounds the granule. The depolymerase system is a complex one that also involves a soluble fraction, underlining the importance of reactions at liquid-solid interfaces in the process and emphasizing that relatively little work has been done to isolate polyphosphate or glycogen granules in their native state in order to examine the possibility of regulation by a membranous system.

The Role and Regulation of Energy Reserve Polymers in Micro-organisms

Multi-dimensional Roles of Ketone Bodies in Fuel Metabolism, Signaling, and Therapeutics

Binding Energy, Specificity, and Enzymic Catalysis: The Circe Effect

Synthesis of cell constituents from C2-units by a modified tricarboxylic acid cycle.

Mechanism of fatty acid synthesis

Enzymatic synthesis of citric acid. II. Crystalline condensing enzyme.

Enzymes of fatty acid metabolism. IV. Preparation and properties of coenzyme A transferase.

Replication of viral rna. vi. nucleotide composition of the replicative form of tobacco mosaic virus rna and of its component strands.

An RNA synthetase is formed in Escherichia coli after infection with bacteriophages containing RNA. Specific annealing techniques revealed that, from the very outset of the reaction in vitro, the partially purified enzyme-template complex synthesizes parental-type plus strands, namely, MS2-RNA when isolated from cells infected with MS2 phage and Q β -RNA in the case of cells infected with Q β phage. This is in contrast to the situation found with Q β replicase primed with Q β -RNA, where the initial product is the complementary strand.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/157/3789/701.full.pdf

Morton C. Schneider

Papers

Enzymatic synthesis of citric acid. II. Crystalline condensing enzyme.

Enzymes of fatty acid metabolism. IV. Preparation and properties of coenzyme A transferase.

Replication of viral rna. vi. nucleotide composition of the replicative form of tobacco mosaic virus rna and of its component strands.

Replication of Viral RNA: RNA Synthetase from Escherichia coli Infected with Phage MS2 or Qβ