Lytic Action of Egg White Lysozyme on the Food Contaminating Microorganisms

Lytic Action on Bacillus subtilis

Abstract

There has been no report about the lytic action of lysozyme on germinale spores, vgetative cells or spore-forming organisms incubated for a long time. In this paper, the lytic action of lysozyme is reported on spores and vegetative cells of Bacillus subtilis which is one of the food contaminating microorganisms.
In this experiment, the effect of lysozyme of various concentration such as 0.00125, 0.0025, 0.005, 0.01, 0.0125, 0.025, 0.05, 0.1 and 0.2% was examined by using spores and vegetative cells which were cultured for 3 hours or 48 hours in a pepton water. The results obtained are as follows.
1) In all the concentrations of lysozyme except for 0.00125% concentration, spores were inhibited to germinate, and in a 0.00125% lysozyme solution very slight germination was observed. The lytic activity of lysozyme to spores, however, must be determined by detecting the liberation of some chemical compositions from spore.
2) Lysozyme exhibited a fairly high lytic activity on vegetative cells in 0.01, 0.005 and 0.0025% lysozyme concentrations respectively and this activity became lower in such concentration order as 0.025, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2 and 0.00125%.
3) Bacterial counts showed similar tendency to results of transmittance values in 1, 24, 48 and 72 hours after incubation.