PRODUCTION OF ALPHA TOXIN OF CLOSTRIDIUM PERFRINGENS III. THE ROLE OF CERTAIN UNIDENTIFIED FACTORS ON THE TOXIN PRODUCTION

Abstract

In the preceding paper, it was shown that the semisynthetic medium might support growth ofCl. perfringens, while a potent toxin was not produced in it even when various cultural conditions were controlled (Murataet al., 1958) . Various reports agreed in that some factors in the enzymatic digests of protein were necessary to obtain a potent toxin (Adamset al., 1947; Macfarlane and Knight, 1941; Murataet al., 1956, 1957) . Rogers and Knight (1946) demonstrated that the toxin-promoting effect of autolysed muscle was in part due to glucosamine. Adamset al. (1947) presented evidences indicating that glycerylphosphorylcholine or lecithin enhanced the toxin production to some extent. However, the addition of glucosamine or lecithin to the semisynthetic medium failed to promote the toxin production in the authors' laboratory. The reason of this discrepancy might be due to the difference of the basal medium. Therefore, it was tried to follow the toxin-promoting factors in the digests by using the semisynthetic medium as the basal medium. In the course of the study to isolatek“toxin-promoting factors”from the digests of protein, it was found that such factors were distributed over various fractions obtained by several purification procedures. Among these fractions one prepared by the methanol precipitation of the dialysate of digests was shown to be most active and the addition of this fraction to the simple medium made it possible to produce a potent toxin comparable to that obtained in the peptone medium. It was also suggested that some peptides might partly be responsible for the activity of this fraction.