Bacterial metabolism of ethylene glycol

Abstract

Metabolism of ethylene glycol as the sole source of carbon by a species of Flavobacterium was affected by the dissolved oxygen tension of the growth medium. Under strongly aerobic conditions the diol was exclusively metabolised to glycollate by an initial oxidase, subsequently metabolised to acetyl-CoA with no net change in ATP, and then oxidised to CO2 by the tricarboxylic acid cycle yielding large amounts of reduced nicotinamide nucleotides which were used to generate a net gain in ATP by oxidative phosphorylation. Under microaerophilic conditions, some ethylene glycol after initial metabolism to acetyl-CoA by the oxidase-inhibited pathway, was subsequently catabolised to acetyl phosphate and then acetate, yielding a net gain in ATP by substrate-level phosphorylation: additionally some diol was catabolised by an inducible diol dehydratase to acetaldehyde and subsequently reduced to ethanol as a terminal metabolite.