Formation of N,N -Dimethylglycine, Acetic Acid, and Butyric Acid from Betaine by Eubacterium limosum

Abstract

Two bacterial strains that grow anaerobically on betaine were isolated from enrichment cultures and identified as strains of Eubacterium limosum. In a mineral medium supplemented with yeast extract and Casitone, the doubling time of E. limosum strain 11A on betaine was 6 h at 37°C. The molar growth yield amounted to 9 g of dry cell mass per mol. Betaine was fermented in accordance with the following equation: 7 betaine + 2 CO 2 → 7 N,N -dimethylglycine + 1.5 acetate + 1.5 butyrate. E. limosum also grew on methanol and choline. The former was converted to acetate and butyrate, and the latter was converted to N,N -dimethylethanolamine, acetate, and butyrate. The conditions for the quantitative determination of N,N -dimethylglycine by capillary tube isotachophoresis have been determined.

Combined biological treatment of high‐sulphate wastewater from yeast production

“…A similar cleavage mechanism for trimethylglycine under anaerobic conditions has also been reported for Clostridium sporogenes (Naumann et al 1983;von Zumbusch et al 1994) while the fermentation products of Eubacterium limosum are N,N-dimethylglycine, acetic acid and butyric acid (Müller et al 1981;von Zumbusch et al 1994). The acetate and trimethylamine can be readily used as carbon and energy sources by acetotrophic (e.g.…”

Glycine betaine metabolism in the acetogenic bacterium Acetobacterium woodii

“…Under oxic conditions, it is oxidatively demethylated by monooxygenases to yield dimethylglycine and/or sarcosine (monomethylglycine) and glycine (Wargo, 2013). Under anoxic conditions two routes exist: one is a reduction of GB to trimethylamine and acetyl phosphate catalysed by GB reductase (Möller et al, 1984;Hormann and Andreesen, 1989;Meyer et al, 1995), the other route is the demethylation to DMG, mediated by methyltransferases (Müller et al, 1981;Heijthuijsen and Hansen, 1989;Watkins et al, 2014) and a further metabolism of the methyl group.…”

“…There are only a few physiological groups of anaerobic microorganisms that can grow on GB. These are the methanogenic archaea (Watkins et al, 2014), the sulphate-reducing (Heijthuijsen and Hansen, 1989) and the acetogenic bacteria (Müller et al, 1981;Eichler and Schink, 1984). They have in common the reductive acetyl-CoA pathway or Wood-Ljungdahl pathway (WLP) that is designed to metabolize C 1 compounds such as methyl groups (Ljungdahl, 1994;Ragsdale, 2008;Fuchs, 2011;Schuchmann and Müller, 2014).…”

“…The other way is by demethylation of GB and further metabolizing the methyl group. This was discovered already in 1981 in Eubacterium limosum (Müller et al, 1981) and later in 1984 in S. ovata (Möller et al, 1984). But since then only a few studies have addressed the biochemistry of acetogenesis from GB by demethylation.…”

Interspecies hydrogen transfer in co-cultures of methanol-utilizing acidogens and sulfate-reducing or methanogenic bacteria

“…that carry' out acidogenic fermentation of methanol and CO, [1][2][3][4][5][6]. A fermentation of this type has also been rcported for a few species that had been described earlicr, but whose methylotrophic potential had not previously been revealed [7][8][9][10]. Most of these bacteria form acetate as the fermentation product (Eqn.…”