Enzymes of the glutamate and aspartate synthetic pathways in a glutamate-producing bacterium, Brevibacterium flavum.

Glutamate-auxotrophic mutants lacking phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase(PC), citrate synthase (CS) or glutamate dehydrogenase (GD), an aspartate auxotroph lacking aspartate aminotransferase (TA), and a glutamate-aspartate double auxotroph lacking both aconitase (AH) and TA were obtained from Brevibacterium flavum No. 2247, a glutamate-producing bacterium. Prototrophic revertants further derived from the CS- and GD-lacking auxotrophs concomitantly recovered the enzyme activities that their parents had lost. These results indicate involvement of the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and GD in glutamate biosynthesis, that of PC in the biosynthesis of the TCA cycle intermediates and that of TA in aspartate biosynthesis. The CS-deficient mutants accumulated large amounts of acetate and small amounts of pyruvate, aspartate and alanine, while the GD-deficient strains accumulated large amounts of 2-oxo-glutarate and small amounts of citrate. Synthesis of PC was repressed by either glutamate or aspartate and those of CS and GD were repressed by glutamate, whereas those of pyruvate dehydrogenase (PD), AH, and isocitrate dehydrogenase were not affected significantly by glutamate; that of TA was also not affected by aspartate or by glutamate. The specific activities of PD and AH gave peaks during the cellular cultivation, related to the temporary accumulation of their substrates, pyruvate and citrate, respectively. These and previous results on the regulation of the enzymatic activities provide a definite regulatory mechanism for glutamate and aspartate syntheses.