Microbial Biochemistry

This book
focusses on microbial physiology, biochemistry and genetics and provides the
reader with detailed information on a number of microbial pathways. Insight
into microbial biochemistry have allowed for the formulation of concepts that
have turned out to be important in the study of higher organisms.

In the
first section, the principles of bacterial growth are given, as well as a
description of the different layers that enclose the bacterial cytoplasm, and
their role in obtaining nutrients from the outside media through different
permeability mechanism, which are described in detail. A chapter is devoted to
allostery, which is indispensable for the comprehension of many regulatory
mechanisms described throughout the book.

The second
section analyses the mechanisms by which cells obtain the energy necessary for
their growth; Glycolysis, the pentose phosphate pathway, the tricarboxylic and
the anaplerotic cycles. Two chapters are devoted to classes of microorganisms
rarely dealt with in textbooks, namely the Archaea, mainly the methanogenic
bacteria, and the methylotrophs. Eight chapters describe the principles of
regulation at the transcriptional level, with the necessary knowledge of the
machineries of transcription and translation.

The next fifteen
chapters deal with the biosynthesis of the cell building blocks, amino acids,
purine and pyrimidine nucleotides and deoxynucleotides, water-soluble vitamins
and coenzymes, isoprene and tetrapyrrole derivatives and vitamin B12.

The two
last chapters are devoted to the study of protein-DNA interactions and to the
evolution of biosynthetic pathways. The considerable advances made in the last
thirty years in the field by the introduction of gene cloning and sequencing
and by the exponential development of physical methods such as X-ray
crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance and cryo-electron microscopy have
helped in presenting microbial metabolism as a highly multidisciplinary field
of study.