Occurrence of the Aldolase and Isomerase Equilibria in Bacterial Metabolism

tially the same scheme of carbohydrate metabolism for muscle and yeast. Their scheme differed markedly from that of Neuberg involving methylglyoxal, which had received general acceptance. Phosphoglyceric acid is a key intermediate in the Embden-Meyerhof scheme and its isolation from a bacterial dissimilation of glucose provided the first specific evidence of the application of the Meyerhof scheme to bacteria. Werkman et al. (1936) and Stone and Werkman (1936a, 1936b, 1937) reported the isolation of this compound from various bacterial species. Previously Antoniani (1933) had shown that Escherichia coli formed pyruvic acid from phosphoglyceric acid and Tikka (1935) that the same organism fermented hexosediphosphate and phosphoglyceric acid to normal final products. Wiggert and Werkman (1937) pre-sented additional evidence by demonstrating the initial esterifica-tion of inorganic phosphorous in the fermentation of glucose by resting cells of Aerobacter aerogenes. Werkman, Stone, and Wood (1937) further studied the dissimilation of phosphorylated esters by the propionic bacteria and showed that the final products of these fermentations were normal and also demonstrated that 0.02 M sodium fluoride stopped fermentation of these esters. Endo (1938) obtained an acetone preparation from E. coli which showed many of the general characteristics of muscle and yeast prepara-tions, i.e., that the production of pyruvic acid from glucose was greatly stimulated by traces of hexosediphosphate as a phos-phorylating agent, acetaldehyde as a hydrogen-acceptor, or addi-