Fluorescent bacteria reveal steps in vitamin B-12 synthesis
Raquel Harper
Vitamin B-12 (cobalamin) helps in the synthesis of DNA and red blood cells and is important
in the maintenance of the insulation layer that surrounds nerve cells. Scientists
know how virtually every molecule needed for life is made, but vitamin B-12 has
remained a puzzle for decades. Researchers may have recently discovered, quite by
accident, how cells manufacture the vitamin.
After talking to a colleague who had discovered
that adding laundry whitener (calcofluor) to a bacterium strain in a lab dish produced
fluorescence, Graham C. Walker from the department of biology at MIT in Cambridge,
Mass., decided he would try adding it to a strain he was studying.
Sinorhizobium
meliloti exists
in soil and has a symbiotic relationship with plants,
in which the bacteria fix nitrogen into ammonia in exchange for food provided by
the plant. The bacterium glowed under UV radiation, and his students thought that
was pretty cool.
Walker and his students used the reaction
to see why some of the bacteria seemed to help the plants grow and some did not.
They found that mutant bacteria, which could not support plant growth, displayed
abnormally bright fluorescence in the petri dish with added calcofluor, while normal
bacteria did not. Gordon R.O. Campbell, Walker’s graduate student, isolated
one of the brightest mutants,
bluB, which was particularly symbiotically
defective. He found that the mutant was missing a gene needed for the bacteria’s
symbiotic relationship with the plant. The gene happened to resemble one in another
bacteria that helps in the biosynthesis of vitamin B-12.
When a mutant bacterium that doesn’t contain B-12 is coupled
with laundry whitener in a lab dish, it fluoresces under UV radiation (as seen here).
Isolating the mutant genes from the bacteria helped the researchers discover an
important step in the synthesis of vitamin B-12.
The scientists discovered that, when
they added 5,6-dimethylbenzimidazole (DMB), a critical component of the vitamin,
to the
bluB mutant, the bacteria were able to establish symbiosis with the
plant. They then involved Kavita Mistry, an analytical chemist from Merck &
Co. Inc. in Rahway, N.J., to help them determine what causes defective vitamin B-12
synthesis in the
bluB mutant.
The researchers first isolated vitamin
B-12 and its related components from the mutant and wild-type bacteria. Mistry used
a high-performance liquid chromatography system from Agilent Technologies Inc.
of Palo Alto, Calif., to separate the material. Because she knew that the differences
observed in the samples were probably related to the vitamin, she focused on detection
at the 525-nm wavelength, where compounds such as B-12 absorb. “I saw a dramatic
difference between the
bluB mutant and the wild-type bacteria. The major
thing I noticed was that vitamin B-12 was not present in
bluB,” Mistry
said.
She tested the
bluB mutant both
by itself and with added DMB at 525 nm. With DMB, a peak appeared near 12 minutes,
which she knew corresponded to the time where vitamin B-12 was expected. Mistry
then coupled the liquid chromatography system with a Finnigan LCQ mass spectrometer
from Thermo Electron Corp. of Waltham, Mass., to confirm the presence and identity
of B-12 in those samples.
When the researchers found another
peak adjacent to the B-12 peak that was prominent in the
bluB samples, they
decided to investigate further. Mistry added a photodiode detector to the liquid
chromatography system to observe the full spectrum across that peak. The spectrum
revealed an overall similarity to vitamin B-12, but with an additional maxima at
248 nm and a shoulder at 268 nm, characteristic of the presence of guanine. These
data suggested that B-12 synthesis in the
bluB mutant proceeds until the
last step, the replacement of guanine with DMB.
Discovering the vitamin B-12 defect
in the mutant bacteria allowed the scientists to observe a necessary step in how
cells manufacture the vitamin. They hope to eventually break the code for the entire
pathway of B-12 synthesis.
PNAS, published online Feb. 20, 2006.
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