“…Even though L. pneumophila preferentially utilizes amino acids for carbon and energy, in silico analysis of the L. pneumophila genome sequence revealed that this organism is auxotrophic for the seven amino acids Arg, Cys, Ile, Leu, Met, Thr and Val (Cazalet et al, 2004;Chien et al, 2004). Furthermore, it has been shown that the amino acids Arg, Cys, Ile, Leu, Met, Ser, Thr and Val are essential for growth of L. pneumophila in vitro (Pine et al, 1979;George et al, 1980;Reeves et al, 1981;Ristroph et al, 1981;Tesh and Miller, 1981;Tesh et al, 1983;Molofsky and Swanson, 2004;Wieland et al, 2005;Eylert et al, 2010). The four amino acids, Arg, Cys, Gln and Ser, are needed to support growth in vivo (Wieland et al, 2005).…”