The role of tungstate and/or molybdate in the formation of aldehyde oxidoreductase in Clostridium thermoaceticum and other acetogens; immunological distances of such enzymes.

Besides Clostridium thermoaceticum and C. formicoaceticum other resting acetogenic clostridia such as C. aceticum and C. thermoautotrophicum and to a lesser extent non-clostridial acetogens such as Butyribacterium methylotrophicum and Eubacterium limosum were able to reduce propionate to propanol at the expense of carbon monoxide or formate. Methylviologen usually increased the reduction rate. Ten microM molybdate in the growth medium decreased this capability for C. thermoaceticum but increased it or had no effect for the other organisms. Ten microM tungstate in the growth medium increased the aldehyde oxidoreductase activity in all organisms. Crude extracts of C. thermoaceticum cells grown in the presence of 10 microM or 1 mM molybdate showed by ELISA the same or even a 4 fold concentration of aldehyde oxidoreductase in the latter case. However, the enzymic activity was very low in both cases. Omission of dithionite in the growth medium diminished the antigen by a factor of about 8. The immunological distance between the enzyme from C. thermoaceticum and C. thermoautotrophicum was rather low but very large to C. formicoaceticum and undeterminably large to the other organisms.