A Microbiological Method for the Determination of Manganese

A salt mixture containing manganese has been widely used in media for lactic acid bacteria (l-3).The growth-enhancing properties of manganese for lactic acid bacteria has been noted by various investigators (4, 5), and Moeller (G), using a highly purified medium of synthet.icnature, found it essential for a strain of Xtreptobactwium plantarum.More recently Mac-Lead and Snell (7) have shown that manganese is essential for many organisms of this group.The successful use of lactic acid bacteria for assay of vitamins and amino acids suggested study of their applicability to manganese assay.Although many chemical methods for the estimation of this ion in a host of different materials have appeared, application of many of these to biological materials, in which only a few micrograms of manganese may be present with large quantit,ies of interfering materials (e.g.iron in blood), has not been generally satisfactory.Development and use of a microbiological method will be described below.EXPERIMENTAL