Fatty acid composition and primer specificity of de novo fatty acid synthetase in Bacillus globispores, Bacillus insolitus, and Bacillus psychrophilus

Abstract

The fatty acid compositions of 3 psychrophilic species of Bacillus were determined by GLC. The proportions of straight-chain fatty acids, branched-chain fatty acids and unsaturated fatty acids were 13.3, 86.7 and 26.1% of the total cellular fatty acids for B. globisporus, 36.6, 63.4 and 25.1% for B. insolitus and 6.9, 93.1 and 18.4% for B. psychrophilus, respectively. In all 3 organisms the de novo fatty acid synthetase specificity towards acyl-CoA primers was butyryl-CoA > propionyl-CoA .mchgt. acetyl-CoA. This shows that B. insolitus, which has an unusually large proportion of straight-chain fatty acids for Bacillus, does not possess a different de novo fatty acid synthetase than the other 2 organisms. Therefore, the greater proportion of straight-chain fatty acids in B. insolitus may be explained by a large supply of straight-chain primer.