The Endogenous Respiration of Bacillus cereus: I. Changes in the Rate of Respiration with the Passage of Time.

A starving bacterial cell may continue to respire for some time; Mycobacterium tuberculosis for example, retained an appreciable respiration, even after starving for 15 days, (Loebel, Shorr and Richardson, 1933). Stier and Stannard (1935) found that the respiration of yeast was also resistant to starvation, and proposed the term "endogenous respiration" to describe the respiration of starved cells. Bacillus cereus has a large endogenous respiration which persists for some time. These organisms are all grampositive. Sevag (1933) has suggested that this character is related to high endogenous respiration, for he found that butyric acid bacilli with a low endogenous respiration failed to retain Gram's stain. Evidence is given below which shows that, in the case of B. cereus, the gram-positive character and the high endogenous respiration are both associated with a high content of fats in the cell.