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                        THE OCCURRENCE OF


                        POLYPHOSPHATES IN


                        LIVING ORGANISMS









                        The first report on the presence of condensed inorganic phosphates in living organisms
                        dates back to 1888, when Liebermann (Liebermann, 1888) found them in yeast ‘nuclein’.
                        Soon after that, Kossel (Kossel, 1893) and Ascoli (Ascoli, 1899) showed that condensed
                        phosphates formed a part of ‘plasminic acids’, obtained by the partial hydrolysis of yeast
                        nucleic acids. Recent data have shown that PolyPs are widespread in various organisms
                        and can be found in the cells of procaryotes and eucaryotes, especially fungi, plants and
                        animals. Table 3.1 lists some organisms in which condensed phosphates have been identi-
                        fied. Only reviews are cited in this table concerning Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces
                        cerevisiae, the microorganisms where PolyP metabolism has been most extensively studied.
                        It should be noted, however, that new bacteria species from activated sludge accumulat-
                        ing PolyPs are very numerous and only some of them are presented in the table (see
                        Chapter 9).
                          In addition, it should be mentioned that only certain methods for the detection of PolyPs
                        may provide good evidence of their occurrence in the organisms under study. These are
                        the chemical methods of extraction, along with the subsequent identification of cyclot-
                        riphosphate among the products of partial hydrolysis by chromatography, enzymatic meth-
                                                    31
                        ods, electophoretic techniques and P NMR spectroscopy, which were described earlier in
                        Chapter 2. The data obtained by cytochemical methods must now be regarded as being only
                        preliminary.
                          On the other hand, it is also necessary to treat with caution any conclusions about the
                        absence of PolyPs in any particular organism. Their content depends significantly on the
                        development stage, growth conditions, tissues or cell compartments being analysed. Re-
                        ports on the absence of PolyPs in various organisms, e.g. Streptococcus faecalis (Harold,
                        1966), several algae (Langen, 1958), some insects (Wiame and Lefebvre,1946), many Acti-
                        nomycetes (Kokurina et al., 1961), lichens and crayfish (Kulaev, 1979), and cells and tissues

                        The Biochemistry of Inorganic Polyphosphates  I. S. Kulaev, V. M. Vagabov and T. V. Kulakovskaya
                        C   2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd ISBN: 0-470-85810-9











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