Practical Engineering significance of using lactate as a carbonsource

Em ekhatipoREMOVE at
Thu Apr 18 09:02:47 EST 2002

Lactate is found as one of the major carbon compounds present in sewage
waters. There are other carbonic acids like acetate, butyrate and propionate
that are also found in sewage. The reason why lactate is used in experiments
is that e.g. acetate and butyrate don't support growth as well as lactate
simply for the reason that these two compounds are much less reduced than
lactate. Lactate as a relatively reduced compound is metabolized by
relatively low expense for the cell, mainly via reactions of the TCA cycle,
whereas metabolization of more oxidized acetate would require anaplerotic
pathways (glyoxylate pathway), or, if such pathways are not present in the
bacterium, presence of other, more oxidized, compounds (e.g., CO2 or
artificial acceptors like DMSO).

Emir Khatripov

""Guha, Hillol (DERM)"" <GuhaH at> wrote in message
news:10D292F59E53D411B87300902785B0A010322CE2 at
> I am seeing many research papers that use Lactate as a carbon source for
> bioremediation. Why only Lactate, why not other carbon source?  Does
> microbes have special affinity towards lactate? If someone can throw some
> light into the process, why lactate is used, it would be of immense help.
> Thankyou.
> Hillol Guha
> guhah at
> ---

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