Utilization of Ten Carbohydrates in Bacteria

School of Bioengineering, Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Bioengineering, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250300, China

^* Corresponding author: yanshigan@126.com

Abstract

Microorganisms are widely distributed in the environment, with abundant species and diverse metabolic capacities. Carbon source utilization abilities are among the most widely assayed phenotypes for microorganisms. So far, the comparison of carbon source utilization abilities is limited to very small groups of microorganisms. There is a lack of large-scale comparison of carbon source utilization abilities at different taxonomic levels. To address this issue, the utilization abilities towards ten carbohydrates, including D- glucose, maltose, L-arabinose, D-mannose, sucrose, D-mannitol, D-fructose, D-galactose, cellobiose, and lactose, were compared for 9,043 bacterial species from 20 phyla. Firstly, the data (phenotype) on the utilization abilities of ten carbohydrates were collected from the journal International Journal of Systematic of Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM). Then, the utilization abilities were compared at different taxonomic levels. Lastly, the phenotype results of the pathogenic genus Brucella were presented. This study provides new insights into the carbohydrate utilization abilities of bacteria and provides new data on the diverse metabolic capacities for different taxonomic groups.