Abstract
R-type of L. acidophilus is sensitive to saline and trypaflavine, reacts positive to Millon's reagent and heavy metal ions and forms granular or rough colony, making chains of various lengths. These characters are not seen in S-type. It is the purpose of this paper to study the cell-wall components of S-type and R-type to see the difference between them, if any.
Following results were obtained.
1. The polysaccharides obtained from the cell wall of S-type and R-type showed the similar sedimentation curves with 2 peaks each other in the ultra centrifugation analysis.
2. Employing the polysaccharides prepared by the author, no difference of antigenity was found between S-type and R-type by the agar-gel-diffusion technic of Ouchterlony, in which only a single precipitation line was found.
3. Both in S-type and R-type, the monosaccharides of the cell wall were proved to be galactose, mannose, xylose, rhamnose and glucosamine. However the amount of rhammose of R-type seemed to be much smaller than that of S-type.
As reviewed in the previous paper, it was possible to find several differences in the biological characters between S-Type and R-type of L. acidophilus. Besides, it was difficult to find any difference in the cell-wall components between the two types even by using highly purified polysaccharides in the precipitation reaction and paperchromatographic analysis. Minor difference in rhamnose concentration between them, however, leads us to suspect that some change may occur in the composition of some carbohydrate of the cell wall when S-type mutates to R-type.
