Koei HAMANA, * Masahiro KAMEKURA,* * Hiroshi ONISHI,***

Qualitative and quantitative determinations of polyamines have been done in 4 photosynthetic eubacteria and 6 extreme-halophilic archaebacteria. For comparison, 5 moderate-halophilic eubacteria were also analyzed to determine their polyamine contents. Not only putrescine and spermidine but also homospermidine were found in the photosynthetic eubacteria, especially in the N2-fixing species, Rhodospirillum and Chromatium. Norspermidine, norspermine, and spermine were not detected in the phototrophic eubacteria. No appreciable amount of any polyamine was found in extreme-halophilic archaebacteria, Halobacterium and Halococcus, while moderate-halophilic eubacteria contained quite high concentrations of putrescine and sper-midine and cadaverine. When arginine was incubated with cell lysates of these two archaebacteria, appreciable amounts of agmatine were produced; neither put-rescine nor cadaverine was formed in the presence of ornithine or lysine. No detectable amount of spermidine was produced by the lysates on incubation with putrescine. Polyamines such as putrescine and spermidine onomic markers. Norspermidine (caldine) and occur widely in almost all prokaryotes as well as norspermine (thermine) could be of possible use eukaryotes, while spermine is rarely detected in in the biochemical taxonomy in thermophilic eu-prokaryotes (V). Many other unusual polyamines bacteria (2, 3) and halophilic eubacteria (Vibrion-have recently been found and some of them are aceae) (4, 5). Another unusual polyamine, sym-thought to be candidates for phylogenic and tax- homospermidine (homospermidine) has been found in N2-fixing cyanobacteria (6, 7). This polyamin