Respiration terminal electron acceptor

SRB, a diverse group of anaerobic bacteria isolated from a variety of environments, use sulfate in the absence of oxygen as the terminal electron acceptor in respiration. During biofilm formation, if the aerobic respiration rate within a biofilm is greater than the oxygen diffusion rate, the metal/biofilm interface can become anaerobic and provide a niche for sulfide production by SRB. The critical thickness of the biofilm required to produce anaerobie conditions depends on the availability of oxygen and the rate of respiration. The corrosion rate of iron and copper alloys in the presence of hydrogen sulfide is accelerated by the formation of iron sulfide minerals that stimulate the cathodic reaction. 

Aerobic respiration, in which oxygen is required as a terminal electron acceptor... 

These energy-producing reactions are termed respiration processes. They require the presence of an external compound that can serve as the terminal electron acceptor of the electron transport chain. However, under anaerobic conditions, fermentation processes that do not require the participation of an external electron acceptor can also proceed. In this case, the organic substrate undergoes a balanced series of oxidative and reductive reactions, i.e., organic matter reduced in one step of the process is oxidized in another. 

As a result, the partial breakdown of the organic matter by fermentation yields organic products with a low molecular weight, e.g., VFAs, along with C02. Compared with the aerobic respiration, the fermentation is inefficient however, these fermentation products can to some extent, and in addition to fermentable substrate, be used by the sulfate-reducing bacteria that make use of sulfate as the terminal electron acceptor (Nielsen and Hvitved-Jacobsen, 1988). In the absence of sulfate, the methanogenic bacteria utilize the low molecular... 

The bacterium Pseudomonas denitrificans is capable of this kind of metabolism utilizing nitrate as a terminal electron acceptor rather than oxygen. This bacterium can use oxygen as a terminal electron acceptor if it is available, and aerobic respiration is more efficient than anaerobic respiration. 

Anaerobic conditions often develop in hydrocarbon-contaminated subsurface sites due to rapid aerobic biodegradation rates and limited supply of oxygen. In the absence of O, oxidized forms or natural organic materials, such as humic substances, are used by microorganisms as electron acceptors. Because many sites polluted by petroleum hydrocarbons are depleted of oxygen, alternative degradation pathways under anaerobic conditions tend to develop. Cervantes et al. (2001) tested the possibility of microbially mediated mineralization of toluene by quinones and humus as terminal electron acceptors. Anaerobic microbial oxidation of toluene to CO, coupled to humus respiration, was demonstrated by use of enriched anaerobic sediments (e.g., from the Amsterdam petroleum harbor). Natural humic acids and... 

Sulfate Reduction. Dissimilatory sulfate reduction, anaerobic respiration with sulfate as the terminal electron acceptor, is performed by relatively few genera of bacteria (84). Many bacteria and algae are able to... 

The respiratory systems of bacteria are of especial interest1435 and complexity in view of their ability in some cases to use alternative substrates as terminal electron acceptors, depending upon the environmental conditions. This will be illustrated with reference to E. coli, which has been reviewed recently.1436 The advantage of studying respiration in this organism is that, by choice of growth conditions, the pathways of electron transport can be manipulated. In addition, mutants are available which are defective in certain respiratory components. 

Organisms with anaerobic mitochondria can be divided into two different types those which perform anaerobic respiration and use an alternative electron acceptor present in the environment, such as nitrate or nitrite, and those which perform fermentation reactions using an endogenously produced, organic electron acceptor, such as fumarate (Martin et al. 2001 Tielens et al. 2002). An example of the first type is the nitrate respiration that occurs in several ciliates (Finlay et al. 1983), and fungi (Kobayashi et al. 1996 Takaya et al. 2003), which use nitrate and/or nitrite as the terminal electron acceptor of their mitochondrial electron-transport chain, producing nitrous oxide as... 

That is why anaerobic respiration, based on nitrate as a terminal electron acceptor, is more similar to oxygen-based (aerobic) respiration than it is to fermentation and is why it must by definition be clearly distinguished from the latter. The great pioneer in this area, Louis Pasteur, first and simply defined fermentation as life in the absence of oxygen. But today, a century after his pathbreaking work, fermentations are more precisely defined as those metabolic processes that occur in the dark and do not involve respiratory chains with either oxygen or nitrate as terminal electron acceptors. 

Electrochemistry of respiration — The function of the enzymes in the mitochondrial respiratory chain is to transform the energy from the redox reactions into an electrochemical proton gradient across the hydrophobic barrier of a coupling membrane. Cytochrome oxidase (EC 1.9.3.1, PDB 20CC) is the terminal electron acceptor of the mitochondrial respiratory chain. Its main function is to catalyze the reaction of oxygen reduction to water using electrons from ferrocytochrome c 4H+ + 02 + 4e 2H20. This reaction is exother-... 

All plants depend on nitrate reductase to accomplish the seemingly trivial reaction of nitrate reduction to nitrite, often the first step of nitrogen assimilation into compounds required for growth (5, 22). Many bacteria use molybdenum or tungsten enzymes in anaerobic respiration where the terminal electron acceptor is a reducible molecule other than oxygen, such as nitrate (2, 50), polysulfide (51), trimethylamine oxide (33, 52) or dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) (2, 29, 30). 

SQR (respiratory complex II) is involved in aerobic metabolism as part of the citric acid cycle and of the aerobic respiratory chain (Saraste, 1999). QFR participates in anaerobic respiration with fumarate as the terminal electron acceptor (Kroger, 1978 Kroger etal., 2002) and is part of the electron transport chain catalyzing the oxidation ofvarious donor substrates (e.g., H2 or formate) by fumarate. These reactions are coupled via an electrochemical proton potential (Ap) to ADP phosphorylation with inorganic phosphate by ATP synthase (Mitchell, 1979). 

Anaerobic reduction of CO2 to CH4 Carbon dioxide can serve as terminal electron acceptor in anaerobic hydrogen respiration. The product of this reduction is methane when certain members of the domain Archaea, the methanogens, are involved ... 

There are two pathways of dissimilatory nitrate reduction, generally thought to be mediated by anaerobic, or facultatively anaerobic bacteria, using NOs" as a terminal electron acceptor in respiration (Fig. 21.ID and F) (see Chapter 6, Devol, this volume). One pathway leads to production of ammonium, and may act as an internal cychng loop within the system (D Elia and Wiebe, 1990). The other pathway, denitrification, ends in production of N2O and/or N2 gas, which can then be lost from the system to the atmosphere. 

---