Bacterial Mefabolhm 67 



I shall draw your attention only to the so-called simul- 

 taneous adaptation technique, developed independently by 

 Stanier (24) and by Karlsson and Barker (12) in the United 

 States, and by Suda and others (25) in Japan, which can 

 often be used to map out the approximate sequence of steps 

 in a biochemical process. Stanier has applied this method 

 with great success in the study of the bacterial oxidation of 

 aromatic compounds. 



Finally, I must mention the techniques of column and 

 paper chromatography, which have largely replaced earlier 

 methods for the detection, isolation, and estimation of small 

 quantities of all kinds of biologically important com- 

 pounds. No laboratory for the study of bacterial metabol- 

 ism is complete these days without facilities for chromato- 

 graphic analysis. 



The rapid expansion of knowledge of bacterial metabo- 

 lism has been attributable only in part to the work of micro- 

 biologists. Many biochemists, who have little interest in 

 microbiology per se, have come to realize that microorgan- 

 isms provide extremely convenient experimental material 

 for the study of basic biochemical phenomena. The com- 

 mon objective of microbiologists and biochemists is to ob- 

 tain a detailed understanding of the chemical mechanisms 

 that are responsible for the formation of living cells from 

 simple organic and inorganic nutrients. Since bacteria are 

 extremely complicated chemical systems that carry out 

 within the space of a single cell thousands of separate yet 

 integrated reactions, obviously a multitude of problems 

 await the student of bacterial metabolism. I shall mention 

 only a few of these problems. 



Bac ferial Nutrition 



First, it is necessary to know the minimal nutritional re- 

 quirements of the organisms. Here our knowledge is fairly 

 complete for those few bacterial species whose nutritional 



