STUDY OF THE PURINE METABOLISM OF STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS

The purine metabolism of a number of bacterial species has been studied in recent years. The present study is a contribution to an understanding of the purine metabolism of Staphylococcus aureus and consists of an examination of the utilization of various purines by paired strains of this organism. These nutritional studies have revealed that S. aureus can convert guanine to adenine but that adenine cannot be converted to guanine, probably due to an inability to synthesize hypoxanthine from adenine. Another part of this study comprised an elucidation of the mechanism of action of 2, 6-diaminopurine. The metabolism of this compound has been studied extensively by a number of investigators. Diaminopurine has been observed to display a number of diverse and apparently unrelated functions. For example, it is both an antagonist of adenine and also a good source of purines for Lactobacillus casei (Balis et al., 1952); it is an antagonist of folic acid in Streptococcus faecalis (Hitchings et al., 1954); it is methylated to 2-methylamino-6-aminopurine by Escherichia coli (Remy and Smith, 1957); it is a competitive antagonist of xanthine oxidase (Wyngaarden,

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