1 Phototrophic lactate utilization by Rhodopseudomonas palustris is stimulated by co- 2 utilization with additional substrates 3 4 Alekhya Govindarajua*, James B. McKinlayb#, and Breah LaSarreb# 5 6 aMicrobiology and Biotechnology undergraduate programs, Indiana University, 7 Bloomington, IN 47401 8 bDepartment of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47401 9 10 11 Running title: Lactate co-utilization by Rhodopseudomonas palustris 12 13 #Co-corresponding authors:
[email protected];
[email protected] 14 *Present address: Division of Molecular Therapeutics, Research Foundation for Mental 15 Hygiene, Inc., New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, New York, USA 16 17 Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. 18 19 Keywords: mixed substrate utilization, Rhodopseudomonas palustris, lactate, catabolite 20 repression, diauxie 21 22 23 Abstract word count: 213 24 Importance word count: 149 25 Main text word count: 3,222 26 1 27 ABSTRACT 28 The phototrophic purple nonsulfur bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris is known for its 29 metabolic versatility and is of interest for various industrial and environmental applications. 30 Despite decades of research on R. palustris growth under diverse conditions, patterns of R. 31 palustris growth and carbon utilization with mixtures of carbon substrates remain largely 32 unknown. R. palustris readily utilizes most short chain organic acids but cannot readily use 33 lactate as a sole carbon source. Here we investigated the influence of mixed-substrate 34 utilization on phototrophic lactate consumption by R. palustris. We found that lactate was 35 simultaneously utilized with a variety of other organic acids and glycerol in time frames that 36 were insufficient for R.