Alkaliphiles

"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. " Letter to Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, Februarys, 1676 In November 1956, I encountered an alkaliphilic bacterium, although not alkaliphilic in the true sense of the word. I was a graduate student in the Department of Agricultural Chemistry, University of Tokyo, working under the direction of Professor Kin-ichiro Sakaguchi. Autolysis of Aspergillus oryzae was the research theme for my doctoral thesis. The...
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"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. " Letter to Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, Februarys, 1676 In November 1956, I encountered an alkaliphilic bacterium, although not alkaliphilic in the true sense of the word. I was a graduate student in the Department of Agricultural Chemistry, University of Tokyo, working under the direction of Professor Kin-ichiro Sakaguchi. Autolysis of Aspergillus oryzae was the research theme for my doctoral thesis. The reason why Professor Sakaguchi asked me to study the autolysis of Asp. oryzae was a somewhat practical one. He thought the flavor and taste of Japanese sake came from an autolysate of Asp. oryzae. Every day, I cultured stock strains of Asp. oryzae. After one week of culture, all I had to do was taste the cultured fluid. (I used my bero-meter, bero meaning tongue in Japanese. ) Naturally, I was entirely disappointed in microbiology itself. One day in November, I found one cultivation flask in which mycelia of Asp. oryzae had completely disappeared. The night before, when I looked at the flasks, the mold was flourishing in all culture flasks. I still remember vivid pictures of bacteria thriving and mo\ing. No mycelium could be seen under the microscope. The microorganism isolated from that flask was Bacillus circulans, and strong endo-l,3-P-glucanase activity was detected in the culture fluid. This enzyme lyzed Asp. oryzae.