Terminal Respiratory Patterns in Microorganisms

In one form or another the general topic of terminal biological oxidation has been reviewed many times. In each case, however, animal tissues were emphasized and only brief reference was made to microorganisms. In this discussion the re-verse will be attempted. Although a great number of the basic facts still remain obscure, enough progress has been made of late to warrant a comprehensive evaluation of the data thus far accumulated. A complete survey of the literature will not be attempted, but rather an effort will be made to evaluate critically certain reports and leave to the abstracting journals the compilation of refer-ences. It is likewise beyond the province of this discussion to evaluate the data that deal with the initial fermentative processes of substrate. This review will be concerned with the enzymatic reactions which affect the aerobic cleavage of organic molecules to carbon dioxide, the main end product of terminal respira-tion. From what we know of the chemical constitution of most cells, it is to be ex-pected that those interactions of cell constituents by which the organism ob-