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Menaquinone Production and Utilization in Germ-Free Rats after Inoculation with Specific Organisms1

Carl Kindberg, J. W. Suttie2, Kiyohisa Uchida*, Kazumasa Hirauchi* and Hiroyuki Nakao*

Department of Biochemistry, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706 * Shionogi Research Laboratories, Shionogi and Company, Ltd., Fukushima-ku Osaka 553, Japan

Although menaquinones are biologically active forms of vitamin K, factors that influence their production by bacteria or their absorption from the gut are not well understood. Germ-free male rats were inoculated with four different strains of organisms and fecal and tissue menaquinone concentrations were determined. No menaquinones were detected in the tissues or feces of rats colonized with Bifidobacterium longum or Clostridium ramosum, two organisms that have not been reported to produce menaquinones when grown in pure cultures. Rats colonized with Bacteroides vulgatus had high levels of fecal MK-10 with significant amounts of MK-9 and MK-11, whereas rats colonized with Escherichia coli had high levels of fecal MK-8 and small amounts of MK-7. The same menaquinones are produced in pure cultures of these organisms. The predominant fecal menaquinones were also detected in liver and were present in higher concentrations in the liver of those rats not maintained in coprophagy-preventing cages.

KEY WORDS: • menaquinones • vitamin K • germ-free rats

1 Research was supported by the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Shionogi Research Laboratories of Osaka, Japan and, in part, by Grant AM-14881 of the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.

2 To whom reprint requests should be sent.

Manuscript received 27 June 1986. Revision accepted 8 January 1987.






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