Study on eruption of heat for B aroused by lanthanum nitrate and its mechanism

Abstract

Biological effect of rare-earth lanthanum nitrate on the growth of Escherichia coli B was studied using the calorimetric method. There were exceptional changes on the growth thermogenic curves for high concentrations of lanthanum nitrate. For example, the peak high, the total quantity of heat (Q) of cultures and the growth rate constants (k) are evidently increased when compared with normal E. coli B cultures. When the concentration of lanthanum nitrate was at 300 mg/L and 500 mg/L, the Q of the cultures reached 3.89 and 2.54 times of normal cultures, respectively. The survivability of cells and the biomass of the cultures were measured using biological methods and the results show that the growth and multiplication of cells were inhibited and that the biomass decreased at high concentration of lanthanum nitrate. These revealed that the inhibiting cells discharged more quantity of heat than the normal growing cells. We named this phenomenon as “eruption of heat”. It was suggested that the mechanism for the eruption of heat was that La³⁺ ion damages the outer cell membrane and increases its permeability and the proton-electron potential energy across the cell membrane was reduced or couldn’t even be initiated. Energy could not be translated into ATP effectively in the course of oxidative phosphorylation resulting in heat release. So, the growth of the cells was inhibited due to scarceness of energy ATP.

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