Although the carbon/energy ratios of heterotrophic substrates for microbial growth are different this is not reflected in biomass. Nevertheless the macromolecular composition of cells may vary in dependence on growth conditions this does hardly influence the elementary composition and the growth yield. The energy requirement for synthesis of biomass starting from a central precursor, e.g. phosphoglycerate, can be assumed to be constant, hence any differences in carbon conversion efficiency must be attributed to carbon catabolism up to this precursor. This sequence determines if and to what extent an auxiliary substrate effect is possible. However, one has also to consider changes of the P/O ratio due to simultaneous utilization of substratesd which may account for the increase in growth yield with Hansenula polymorpha growing on a methanol/glucose mixture.
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Babel et al. (1985) studied this question.
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