normally associated with the organelles can now be compared to those of the free enzymes to determine if association of these enzymes with the organelle alters any of their characteristics.

      Further elucidation of the polyhedral organelle function is also now possible. A logical starting point would be to examine the enzyme activities of intact organelles in vitro and compare these findings with the results of similar experiment using organelles from mutants lacking selected organelle proteins. In addition, since purification was carried out under aerobic conditions and the pdu operon has been shown to be maximally induced under anaerobic conditions (Bobik et al. 1992, Chen et al. 1995), the purification and investigation of polyhedral organelles from cells grown under anaerobic conditions could potentially reveal important aspects of the polyhedral organelle function. Furthermore, the purification procedure described in this dissertation will most likely be adaptable for use in purifying polyhedral organelles associated with the degradation of ethanolamine and other yet to be discovered processes with only minor modification.

      Another intriguing question that was left unanswered is how enzymes are packaged into these polyhedral organelles. In Chapter 2 it was shown that plasmid-encoded diol dehydratase could be packaged into the polyhedral organelles however the means by which diol dehydratase was either tagged for packaging or recognized by the polyhedral organelle was not examined thus leaving much ground in this area uncovered. Presumably the packaging of RuBisCO and diol dehydratase within a proteinaceous shell alters the characteristics of these enzymes or the processes in which they are involved. Consequently, elucidation of the polyhedral organelle function and the mechanism by