MICROBIOLOGY AND INDUSTRY 



acetone; the recently isolated Bacillus acetoethylicus yields acetone and 

 ethanol; Beijerinck's Granulobacter saccharobutyricum makes butyric acid; 

 Duclaux's Tyrothrix tenuis, dihydroxyacetone. Various moulds of the 

 genus Citromyces may give rise to the production of appreciable quan- 

 tities of citric acid from glucose; Wehmer's Aspergillus fumaricus con- 

 verts it into fumaric acid with very good yields. It would not be dif- 

 ficult to augment these examples with many others, but I fear that 

 this would become tiresome. 



The above survey may, however, suffice to make you realise that a sub- 

 stance such as glucose, easily procurable by purely chemical or bioche- 

 mical methods from a staple product such as starch, can be converted 

 into diverse products with the aid of micro-organisms. And it seems to 

 me that these are exactly the compounds that are of prime importance 

 to the organic chemical industry as building blocks for various syntheses. 

 I believe that no organic chemist is likely to contradict me when I say 

 that the purely chemical manufacture of the above mentioned substances 

 from glucose will cause him far greater difficulties than one is apt to 

 encounter in the corresponding biochemical transformations. 



In his opening address of the Congres de la chimie industrielle, 

 'L'avenir de la chimie organique', none other than Sir William Pope has 

 quite recently emphasized the considerable difference between organic 

 chemistry, both of the past and present, and the conversions that 

 proceed in living organisms. On the one hand Pope notes the high 

 temperatures and the powerful, though rather unspecific chemical 

 reagents that are still indispensable to the chemist; on the other hand 

 the extremely selective mechanisms of the living cell, functioning at 

 ordinary temperatures. It is true that Pope points out that the meth- 

 odology of modern organic chemistry shows an increasing tendency to 

 approximate that of biochemistry, since the application of catalysts, 

 and the consequent use of colloidal reaction media, are practiced 

 more and more by the organic chemist. But this does not alter the fact 

 that the distance that will have to be traversed before the organic 

 chemist possesses a set of catalysts that would enable him to perform 

 the conversions summarized above without the aid of microbes still 

 appears very great. 



This raises the question whether biochemical conversions, proceed- 

 ing under the influence of micro-organisms, are currently of impor- 

 tance for the organic-chemical industry. 



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