FIG 5.
Growth curves of P. alcaligenes SponMu and its mutant derivatives in liquid M9 medium containing 2.5 mM gentisate as the sole source of carbon. Growth was monitored by reading the optical density at 600 nm every 1 h over a period of 16 h on a Bioscreen C system. The growth curves were fitted by the modified Gompertz equation (27) with OriginPro (version 9.1) software, and all points represent the mean values from triplicate trials. LN, natural logarithm; A, OD600 value of the cells; A0, initial OD600 value of the cells. The maximum specific growth rates (μmax) for strains SponMu, SponMuΔhbzG, SponMuΔhbzF, and SponMu-hbzG::dmlA were 0.33, 0.09, 0.19, and 0.60, respectively.