Some interrelationships of amino acids in the nutrition of Leuconostoc mesenteroides.

In 1939 Gladstone clearly demonstrated the phenomenon of amino acid antagonism and showed its relationship to the nutrition of the pathogen Bacillus anthracis. Among the interrelationships involving specific amino acids was the ability of threonine to remove the toxic effects of serine and vice versa. Snell and Guirard (1943) noted the inhibition of growth of Streptococcus lactis by glycine, serine, threonine, or 3-alanine and its removal by alanine or pyridoxine. Maas and Davis (1949) found that glycine and DLalanine completely antagonized the inhibition of Escherichia coli by D-serine. Camien and Dunn (1950) studied the ability of glycine and serine to inhibit the utilization of L-, D-, and DL-alanine and the reversal of this inhibition by higher levels of alanine. An antagonistic effect of glycine upon L-alanine in the nutrition of Lactobacillus casei has been shown by Kihara and Snell (1952). The inhibitory nature of Dor L-alanine for L-serine has also been noted (Prescott et al., 1953) with Lactobacillus delbrueckii. With Leuconostoc mesenteroides strain P-60, it has been impossible to completely remove the lag in growth at low levels of threonine by lowering the serine content (Horn et al., 1947), or the lag in growth at low levels of serine by lowering the threonine content (Meinke and Holland, 1948). Moreover, an induction period in the response of L. mesenteroides to glycine has been reported (Shankman et al., 1947). In the present study an attempt has been made to evaluate the effect of antagonisms involving glycine, L-serine, L-threo-