Fig 2.

Physiological and molecular effects of successive transfers of D. hafniense strain TCE1 in the absence of PCE. Starting from a culture routinely growing with PCE as the electron acceptor (P culture), strain TCE1 was successively transferred 30 times in a medium devoid of PCE. Fumarate was used instead as the electron acceptor (F cultures). (A) Optical densities (absorbance measured at 600 nm) of the successive cultures after 48 h of cultivation. (B) Duplex PCR amplification of fragments of both the pceA (476 bp) and rpoB (289 bp) genes with DNA samples extracted from successive cultures in the absence of PCE. (C) Western blot analysis of the PceA protein (unprocessed [upper] and processed [lower] forms) of total protein samples taken from the same culture series. All experiments were done from duplicate cultures, but only one replicate is depicted for panels B and C.