Variation of oxygen requirement with plasmid size in recombinant Escherichia coli.

We have previously found an inverse relationship between certain cell growth parameters and plasmid size for a series of recombinant Escherichia coli strains containing pUC8 or one of a series of pUC8 recombinant derivatives. To extend these results we investigated whether there was a similar variation among our strains in oxygen requirement, which might be related to the differences in growth. During logarithmic growth in shake flasks, oxygen uptake by E. coli strain JM103 containing an 8.7-kb pUC8 derivative (pBS5) was 2.5 times that of JM103 harboring pUC8 (2.7 kb) and 7.5 times that of plasmid-free JM103. Supplementing the medium with acetate eliminated both the growth disadvantage of and the increased oxygen uptake by the strain harboring pBS5 compared with that containing pUC8. In all cases oxygen consumption decreased drastically as cells began and then continued into stationary phase, and no significant difference was seen among the three strains at these times. When the three strains were grown in a fermentor with continuous monitoring of oxygen levels, plasmid-free JM103 outgrew JM103 containing pUC8 or pBS5 at three levels of aeration. The latter two strains grew identically when aeration was high; their growth curves diverged, however, when aeration was low. In the fermentor experiments the point at which the growth of the three strains diverged was coincident with the point of oxygen depletion in the cultures.