Factors Influencing the Stability of Catabolic Plasmids

这一奖项旨在为一个项目提供支持，以确定废水生物处理过程的性能在何种情况下会因废水成分在暂时离开废水流期间失去为其编码的质粒而受到不利影响。研究人员计划使用甲苯甲醛(由质粒编码的酶降解)、苯甲酸(由质粒或染色体编码的酶降解)和赖氨酸(由染色体编码的酶降解)进行批量和连续培养实验。单独和成对确定底物的性质和培养物的特定生长速度如何影响描述质粒丢失的速率常数。对控制质粒丢失速度的因素的了解将使处理系统的工程设计能够将其损失降至最低，并以其他方式对其进行补偿。这一知识还将有益地影响依赖生物工艺运行的现有废水处理厂的运行效率。

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.