Factors Influencing the Stability of Catabolic Plasmids

该奖项旨在为一个项目提供支持，该项目旨在确定废水生物处理过程的性能在哪些条件下会受到废水成分编码质粒的损失的不利影响，这些质粒在废水流中暂时消失。研究者计划使用甲苯醛（质粒编码酶降解）、苯甲酸酯（质粒或染色体编码酶降解）和赖氨酸（染色体编码酶降解）进行批量和连续培养实验。单独或成对地确定底物的性质和培养物的特定生长速率如何影响描述质粒损失的速率常数。了解控制质粒丢失速率的因素，将使处理系统的工程设计最小化质粒的损失，或者补偿质粒的损失。这一知识也将有利于影响现有的污水处理厂的运行效率，这些污水处理厂的运行依赖于生物过程。

This is an award to provide support for a project to determine conditions under which the performance of a wastewater biological treatment process is adversely affected by loss of plasmids that are encoded for wastewater constituents during their temporary absence from the wastewater stream. The investigator plans to conduct both batch and continuous culture experiments using tolualdehyde (degraded by plasmid-encoded enzymes), benzoate (degraded by plasmid- or chromosomally-encoded enzymes), and lysine (degraded by chromosomally-encoded enzymes), singly and in pairs to determine how the nature of the substrate and the specific growth rate of the culture influence the rate constants that describe plasmid loss. Knowledge of factors that control the rate at which plasmids are lost will permit the engineering design of treatment systems to minimize their loss and otherwise compensate for it. This knowledge will also beneficially affect the operating efficiency of existing wastewater treatment plants that depend on biological processes for their operation.