[Isolation and study of a new marine bacterium growing on hydrocarbons. I. Physiological study (author's transl)].

The bacterial strain L.16.1 isolated from coastal waters polluted by oil-waste, close to the genus Alcaligenes, utilizes preferentially alkanes with a carbon number greater than 9. Sugars and amino-acids cannot serve as carbon source to this bacterium. Cells grown on hydrocarbon the chain length of which ranges from C10 to C18 exhibit very high yield (98%) with a growth rate of 0.47. From our studies it appears that strain L.16.1 is strictly dependent on the presence of the Na+ ion and that this Na+ dependence can be seen at each level of the physiological activity. Alkane-grown cells show morphological features namely disc shaped cytoplasmic vesicles (6-8 per cell). Such vesicles are to be regarded as a consequence of the very high lipid content (twice the standard) which characterizes these cells. Additional lipids belong essentially to the nonsaponifiable fraction (20 times more in hexadecane grown cells); on the contrary, the phospholipid content at both qualitative and quantitative points of view does not depend on the nature of the growth substrate.