Morphological Changes in Bacterial Forms of M. lepraemurium caused by Physico-chemical Treatments

Abstract

A relationship between morphological index of live and dead M. lepraemurium was studied by using light and electron microscopes. First of all, it was clarified that the most important factor for staining conditions influencing morphological index of acid fast morphological index of M lepraemurium obtained by a staining method at room temperature was significantly changed by the method of staining with heat: by the latter, most of nonsolidM. lepraemuriumwere changed to solid acid-fast bacilli. Next, a comparison was made between morphological index of live M lepraemurium and dead ones that were killed by artificial treatments.M. lepraemurium was inactivated by treatments with ultraviolet-irradiation, heating at 60°C for 30min, chloroform, ether, toluene, and n-buthyl-alchol, whereas it was not affected by treatments with desoxycholate and petroleum ether. There were no differences between staining qualities of live and dead M. lepraemurium. However, the cell wall destructions were illustrated in dead bacilli thus inactivated by artificial treatments, when observed by an electron microscope.