摘要：

This chapter focuses on the polymeric reserve materials and thus excludes the consideration of lipids other than poly-β-hydroxybutyrate, and the disaccharide trehalose, which plays an important role in the economy of the yeast cell, but displays certain features that are at variance with the normally accepted behavior of storage compounds. The chapter considers the evidence for the energy-storage roles of glycogen, polyphosphates and poly-p-hydroxybutyrate, and the current state of knowledge concerning the regulation of their biosynthesis and degradation in the microbial cell. The intracellular location of the enzymes concerned with polymer synthesis and degradation is an intriguing problem. The most detailed work has been carried out with PHB granules, which have PHB synthetase and a factor involved in depolymerase activity associated with the membrane that bounds the granule. The depolymerase system is a complex one that also involves a soluble fraction, underlining the importance of reactions at liquid-solid interfaces in the process and emphasizing that relatively little work has been done to isolate polyphosphate or glycogen granules in their native state in order to examine the possibility of regulation by a membranous system.

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