Chapter 14.1, Problem 3R

Summary Introduction

To analyze:

The steps of biochemical pathway showing the sequence of different compounds and enzymes on the basis of the given data.

Given:

Bacterial strains mutated for five different enzymes (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) were grown on a variety of media, which was substituted with different compounds involved in the pathway. Table 1 represents the mutant strain growth on the medium having different compounds required in the biochemical pathway.

Table 1: Growth of different mutants on medium containing different compounds of the biochemical pathway.

In the table shown above, compound ‘C’ or chorismate is the precursor in the biochemical pathway and ‘T’ or tryptophan is the end product. Compound D, E, F, and G are intermediates. The ‘+’ represents growth when the indicated compound was added to the growth medium, and ‘0’ represents the absence of growth.

Introduction:

In a wild-type bacterium, the synthesis of tryptophan takes place through a series of enzymatic reactions starting from the precursor, chorismate. In this experiment, to deduce the biochemical pathway, the bacterial strains have been mutated for different enzymes and the growth of the bacteria in presence of different compounds has been recorded.