A. Miseta et al., ACID-EXTRACTABLE AMINO-ACID POOL IN ESCHERICHIA-COLI - POSSIBLE ROLE IN ENERGY-INDEPENDENT AMINO-ACID ACCUMULATION AND PROTEIN-SYNTHESIS, Microbios, 84(341), 1995, pp. 207-219
The acid extractable amino acid pool (AEP) demonstrates time and conce
ntration dependent saturation kinetics in cold-incubated (0-2 degrees
C) Escherichia coli cells. Attention is drawn in particular to the con
tribution of the AEP to the total noncovalently bound amino acid intra
cellular levels (total pool) at low exogenous amino acid concentration
s. Amino acids compete with one another for associations which interna
lly constitute the AEP. Although physicochemically related amino acids
tend to be better competitors than other amino acids, the physicochem
ical relatedness was by no means the sole, or necessarily the main, fa
ctor determining competitiveness. On the return of cells to incubation
temperatures allowing protein synthesis to proceed, the contribution
of the AEP to protein synthesis was explored.