The effects of canavanine, arginine, and related compounds on the growth of bacteria.

The physiological properties of canavanine, a naturally occurring, structural analogue of arginine, have not been extensively investigated. Recently, Horowitz and Srb (1) found that canavanine inhibited growth of wild type Neurospora, and that the inhibition was competitively alleviated by arginine. Lysine and methionine were also effective in alleviating canavanine inhibition for certain strains of Neurospora, though not so effective as arginine. The sensitivity of various Neurospora types to inhibition by canavanine varied considerably, and appeared to be genetically determined. These authors review the limited previous work dealing with the physiological response of various organisms to canavanine. As an extension of this work, the present article describes the effects of canavanine on growth of several lactic acid bacteria. In contrast to wild type Neurospora, most of these organisms require arginine for growth. For comparative purposes, two strains of Escherichia coli have been used, a parent strain which grows without added arginine, and an arginine-requiring mutant derived from the parent strain by treatment with mustard gas.l