A study of the myxobacterial-eubacterial association
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Meeting name
Sponsors
Date
Journal Title
Format
Thesis
Subject
Abstract
"The myxobacteria are an unusual group of micro-organisms in many respects. One of the interesting aspects of these organisms is that many of them are closely associated with eubacteria; hence, they sometimes require a considerable amount of patience and skill to isolate into pure culture. (The word eubacteria will be used throughout this dissertation to describe the bacteria associated with myxobacteria, regardless of whether they belong to Order I., Pseudomonadales, or to Order IV., Eubacteriales, of the Division Protophyta.) Unlike most of the eubacteria with which they are often closely associated, the myxobacteria produce large quantities of polysaccharide slime around themselves. The abundance and nature of the slime, in which eubacteria are obviously often entrapped, no doubt hinders routine bacteriological purification techniques. The concept that myxobacteria are difficult to purify is not new, for scattered throughout the literature on the myxobacteria are numerous references that attest to this problem. Some of the most obvious of these references are: "difficulty in inducing it to grow pure" (Thaxter, 1097), "impurities" (Thaxter, 1904), "Rohkultur" (Baur, 1904), and "impure culture" (Kofler, 1913). One early reference (Pinoy, 1921) suggested that the relationship was more than a simple physical entrapment of the eubacterial cells in the slime surrounding the myxobacteria. Pinoy coined the name Synbacteria to encompass the myxobacteria and the associated eubacteria and, thereby, implied a symbiotic association between the myxobacteria and their associated eubacteria. Although this view must have seemed reasonable to Pinoy at the time, it was, nevertheless, quite illogical to classify two different organisms as one. Needless to say, the name Synbacteria has only historical significance today. The word association is defined in Webster’s dictionary as "anything closely or usually connected with another". This definition is accepted in this dissertation, and is implied whenever the word association is used to describe the myxobacterial-eubacterial relationship. References, both direct and indirect, have been made in the literature to the relatively constant association of myxobacteria and eubacteria, although little effort has been expended to elucidate the nature of this association. Therefore, the primary goal of the study reported here was to in vestigate the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the myxobacterial-eubacterial association. Essentially, this consisted of a compilation of the overall species-to-species relationship. As a secondary goal, the study investigated in more detail one particular association, that involving the fruiting myxobacterium, Myxococcus fulvus, and a Gram-negative eubacterium on which it was found growing, Alcaligenes viscolactis."--Introduction.
Table of Contents
DOI
PubMed ID
Degree
Ph. D.
Thesis Department
Rights
OpenAccess.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.