Metabolic Gas Production by a Variety of Spirochetes

¹ U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Dental Research, Bethesda, Maryland

Hydrogen and carbon dioxide evolution by 37 strains of spirochetes from diversified sources and exemplifying the genera Treponema and Borrelia were examined by gas chromatographic technics. All strains of organisms produced carbon dioxide; however, of this group, only four had metabolic production of hydrogen under identical conditions.

All four strains were members of the genus Treponema. Using two types of media and varying the type of serum enrichment or the reducing substance in the finished medium did not appreciably affect the ability of the hydrogen-producing spirochetes to evolve this gas. The same results were obtained when glucose was omitted from one of the two media.

It was further demonstrated that a gasproducing treponeme could be grown in mass culture and the cells sedimented by centrifugation and resuspended for the assay of hydrogen production in the Warburg microrespirometer. The rate of hydrogen evolved was found to approximate that of carbon dioxide production.