[A trial on nutritionally forced mating of conventional glutamate-producing bacteria]

By nutritionally forced mating, we tried to find the sex factor in glutamate producing bacteria with some auxtrophic mutants of Corynebacterium glutamicum, Micrococcus glutamicus and Brevibacterium divaricatum. We failed to find true mates in this trial, even when the cells cured by acridine orange were used to mate with non-cured ones. There were some positive growth when two densed cell suspensions were dropped on the minimum medium, but after subcultured on the minimum medium no growth was found. It seem likely that the bacteria used here, at least, require an enforced cell adhesion, unless true mating is not feasible. The evidence that Corynebacterium renale has pili might be an interesting reference, but we could not find pili in the bacteria used here.