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. 1976 Oct;128(1):86–98. doi: 10.1128/jb.128.1.86-98.1976

Mutant strains (nit) of Salmonella typhimurium with a pleiotropic defect in nitrogen metabolism.

J Broach, C Neumann, S Kustu
PMCID: PMC232829  PMID: 10275

Abstract

We have isolated mutant strains (nit) of Salmonella typhimurium that are defective in nitrogen metabolism. They have a reduced ability to use a variety of compounds including glutamate, proline, arginine, N-acetyl-glucosamine, alanine, and adenosine as sole nitrogen source. In addition, although they grow normally on high concentrations of ammonium chloride (greater than 1 mM) as nitrogen source, they grow substantially more slowly than wild type at low concentrations (less than 1 mM). We postulated that the inability of these strains to utilize low concentrations of ammonium chloride accounts for their poor growth on other nitrogen sources. The specific biochemical lesion in strains with a nit mutation is not known; however, mutant strains have no detectable alteration in the activities of glutamine synthetase, glutamate synthetase, or glutamate dehydrogenase, the enzymes known to be involved in assimilation of ammonia. A nit mutation is suppressed by second-site mutations in the structural gene for glutamine synthetase (glnA) that decrease glutamine synthetase activity.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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