Biographical Memoirs Volume 44 (1974) / Chapter Skim
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11. Chester Hamlin Werkman
11. Chester Hamlin Werkman
Pages 335-377
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A Steinhaus himself contained most valuable autobiographical information, which was kindly included in the material supplied by Mrs.
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Public Health Reports 1936 The effect of Escherichia cold on the growth of Bacillus subtilis when grown in mixed cultures. North Dakota State College Thesis (B.S.)
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Salmonella enteritid is: experimental transmission by the Rocky Mountain wood tick Dermacentor ander soni Stiles. Public Health Rept., 58: 1010-12.
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Bacterial infections of potato tuber moth larvae in an insectary.
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Agr., 4: 11, 15. 1951 Possible use of Bacillus thuringiensis Berliner as an aid in the biological control of the alfalfa caterpillar.
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Pest control by bacteria; alfalfa caterpillar in field reduced to subeconomic levels within two days by bacillus applied as spray. Calif.
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Preliminary tests using Bacillus thuringiensis Berliner against hornworms.
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Bacteria as microbial control agents. Transactions of the 1st International Conference on Insect Pathology and Biological Control, Prague, August 1958, pp.
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Laboratory Exercises in Insect Microbiology and Insect Pathology. Minneapolis, Burgess Publishing Company.
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Colloque international sur la pathologic des insectes et la lutte microbiologique, Paris, October 1962. Entomophaga Moire No.
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An abridged glossary of terms used in invertebrate pathology. Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station.
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CHESTER HAMLIN WERKMAN June 17,1893-September 10,1962 BY RUSSELL W BROWN CHESTER HAMLIN WERKMAN broadly conceived of his sphere of scientific interest as physiological microbiology.
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To some extent, fortuitous circumstances may have played an important role in the life of Chester Hamlin Werkman. He was a graduate student at Iowa State University during the early twenties under Dr.
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CHESTER HAMLIN WERKMAN 331 tion of the chemical activities of living organisms. It can be said with certainty, however, that fortuitous circumstances were not the most important factors in the career which he achieved; perhaps more than anything else his entire life was motivated by a strong desire to be involved at the frontier of his field, and this ambition was reinforced by an unusual store of energy and personal drive.
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332 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS in the affairs of the barber's union in Fort Wayne. Werkman's mother died when he was age fourteen or fifteen and the author is uncertain when his father died; it is assumed, however, that this event occurred perhaps about the time of Werkman's first year as an undergraduate student at Purdue University.
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He applied himself diligently and his background training in organic chemistry served him well in investigations in the field of immunology. He completed the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the spring of 1923 and his thesis, entitled "Immunologic Significance of Vitamins," was published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases in 1923 in three parts:
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IV. Influence of lack of vitamin C on resistance of the guinea-pig to bacterial infection, on production of specific agglutinins, and on opsonic activity.
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The fact that the members of the genus Propionibacterium were responsible for the specific flavor and aroma of Swiss cheese was of little consequence; he was intrigued by the chemical sequence involving the quantitative transformation of glucose to propionic and acetic acids and carbon dioxide. As will be seen later, this particular brand of scientific curiosity led Werkman and his graduate students in numerous directions but always in pursuit of some aspect of the processes initiated by enzymatic activity.
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336 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS originality and innovation; he was in search constantly for a "new angle," either a completely new idea regarding the chemical activities of microorganisms or at least a novel approach to the most significant things being done at the moment by the most progressive investigators in other laboratories. Not only did he consider it essential to be active in the "mainstream" of bacteriological research, preferably enzymatic research, but it was most important that he and his students be in the vanguard.
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In 1922, however, two papers ("The production of propionic acid from pentoses by Propionibacterium pentosaceum," and "Physiological behavior of the propionic acid group of bacteria") , presented at a meeting of the Iowa Academy of Sciences, can be said, in retrospect, to represent the essential direction of his subsequent research interests.
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338 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS classification, but more importantly they became the subjects of a long-range program of biochemical investigations. The classification of the propionic acid group of bacteria was investigated extensively by C
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Since many of the known procedures were not of sufficient accuracy, it was necessary to direct much of the effort of the laboratory toward developing more highly refined qualitative and quantitative methods. In 1930 Werkman applied the partition method in the determination of mixtures of fatty acids, and for several years thereafter he and his graduate students made significant advances in the development and refinement of quantitative methods.
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The role of pyruvic acid as an intermediate was investigated extensively in a variety of types of fermentations and likewise the intermediate roles of various fatty acids, such as the condensation of two molecules of acetic acid to form butyric acid and the degradation of the four-carbon butyric acid to form acetone and carbon dioxide in the butyl alcohol fermentation. These investigations and others similar in nature projected Werkman and his students into the "mainstream" of scientific endeavor.
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pentosaccum, Aerobacter indologenes, Lactobacilltts pentoaceticus, L plantarum, Bacillus subtilis, B
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However, after the data were more carefully examined he readily supported Wood's interpretation that CO., was indeed utilized in the fermentation of glycerol by propionic acid bacteria. This demonstration of the synthetic use of carbon dioxide by heterotrophic bacteria gained for Harland Wood the Eli Lilly Award in 1942 and the focus of national and international attention on the research of the Werkman laboratory.
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A number of investigators working particularly with yeast and fungi (Butkewitsch and Federoff in 1930; Wieland and Sonderhoff in 1933) have reported that succinic acid is formed by a condensation of two molecules of acetic acid.
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344 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 2-carbon compounds. It is necessary in the light of our present knowledge to leave open the possibility of a 4- and 2-carbon cleavage." Following the appearance of the publication by Wood and Werkman in 1936, it was not surprising that other investigators questioned the evidence for this "physiologically important phenomenon." For example, van Niel in 1937 made the significant statement that "Wood and Werkman claim that carbon dioxide is reduced during the fermentation of glycerol by propionic acid bacteria.
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O Nier, and the articles represented a joint publication between the Bacteriology Section, Agricultural Experiment Station, Iowa State College, Ames, Iowa, and the Departments of Physiological Chemistry and Physics, University of Minne
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, gave further confirmation to the earlier work of Wood and Werkman by demonstrating that i3CO., fixed in fermentations of galactose, pyruvic acid, or citric acid by Escherichia cold occurs exclusively in the succinic and formic acids, and that in the fermentation of glucose and glycerol by Propionibacterium pentosaceum the fixed carbon dioxide is in the succinic acid, propionic acid, and propyl alcohol. Moreover, "the data obtained by determination of the fixed i3C are in agreement with the suggestion that succinic acid is formed by union of a 3-carbon compound and carbon dioxide and the propionic acid by decarboxylation of a symmetrical dicarboxylic acid containing fixed carbon dioxide in only one carboxyl group." Further evidence for the mechanism of succinic acid synthesis was presented in the second paper, which showed by degradation of succinic acid synthesized by E
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It is shown by the use of heavy carbon, i3C, as a tracer, that the fixed carbon is located in the carboxyl groups of succinic, lactic, and acetic acids. The assimilated CO., is distributed as follows: Aerobacter indologenes, acetate, lactate, and succinate; Proteus vulgaris, Streptococcus paracitrorrorus, and Staphylococcus can~ This conclusion was in error and was based on the idea that citrate is a symmetrical molec~le and therefore the ketoglutarate formed from citrate was expected to be labeled in both carboxyl groups.
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147: 243-53, 1943) reported that "the exchange of i3CO, with the carboxyl groups of oxalacetic acid during spontaneous decarboxylation was found to be insignficant.
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F Utter, and Werkman (~`Iowa State Coll.
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studied the production of trimethylene glycol by bacteria; Roger Patrick (1933) studied the xylan-fermenting bacteria; C
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investigated the assimilation of acetate by yeast and the use of fatty acids in fat synthesis; Samuel Ail (1948, 1949) studied the mechanism of carbon dioxide replacement by dicarboxylic acids, which by .
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. Seldom does an individual scientist stand alone in his contributions to the body of knowledge; more often than not his reputation and recognition result from the force of his leadership compounded with the efforts of his graduate students and his younger associates in research, and this was certainly true in regard to C
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, Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine, Iowa Academy of Science, Society of the Sigma Xi, Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Lambda Upsilon, and Kappa Delta Pi. In 1958 he was the recipient of the Iowa State University Faculty Citation.
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Bull. Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin Iowa State Coll.
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Studies in the bacteriology of sulphur stinker spoilage of canned sweet corn. Iowa State Coll.
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IV. A method for the provisional identification and quantitative determination of two fatty acids in a mixture.
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Bacteria producing trimethylene glycol. T Bacteriol., 23: 167-82.
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