The oxygen uptake of marine bacteria

In recent studies from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institu-tion (Waksman and Carey, 1935a), it was shown that stored sea water rapidly undergoes a decrease in oxygen content, with a somewhat parallel increase in numbers of bacteria up to a maxi-mum population level, after which oxygen decrease continues to take place in the water. The rates of bacterial multiplication and oxygen consumption were considered as indices of the avail-ability of the organic substances present in the water, in solution and in suspension. In order to learn whether the marine bacteria of themselves could account completely for these phenomena, a study was undertaken on 25 pure cultures of organisms freshly isolated from the sea, with the object of determining their rates of oxygen consumption in the "resting " condition, and the influence of temperature as well as of added organic matter of both readily and not so readily utilizable nature on these rates. Glucose, C.P., was selected as probably the most readily available substance, and purified algiic acid3 as one less generally avail-able. The latter compound occurs abundantly in marine algae (Waksman, Carey and Allen, 1934). 1 Contribution No. 95 of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 2 All cultures were isolated and kindly supplied to the writer by Dr. S. A. Waksman. They are being carried in the collection at Woods Hole for future study, but are referred to here by number, awaiting identification or description. The limited objective of this study, as stated above, renders less important the specific name of each organism. Three of the species however, which were recently described (Waksman et al., 1934), are: Bacterium alginicum (AA2); alginic acid bacterium No. 8 isolated from diatom tow and related to Bacterium alginovorum (AA8); and, Bacterium fucicola (AA17). a Prepared and kindly furnished to the writer by Dr. S. A. Waksman