It has been known that Kirchner's synthetic basal medium (1) contains the necessary nutrients for the growth of acid fast bacilli, i.e. Na
2HPO
4 and KH
2PO
4as phosphate, asparagine as nitrogen, and glycerine as carbonic source. Though this synthetic basal medium alone is an excellent medium for acid fast bacilli, it can not grow them submergedly. When mammalian serum is added to it, however, the surface and submerged growth of acid fast bacilli is markedly enhanced. For example, Kirchner's serum synthetic medium is known as an excellent medium for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Furthermore, many investigators have reported that the addition of serum to synthetic media would enhance the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. (2) (3) (4). Recently, Davis and Dubos (5) has reported that the addition of bovine plasma fraction V albumin to sorbitan monooleate synthetic medium was able more markedly to enhance the growth of tubercle bacilli than other media. They assumed that the action of fraction V albumin would enhance the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis as a protective agent in binding with traces of toxic unesterified fatty acids released by the hydrolysis of the sorbitan monooleate. Youmans and Youmans(6) investigated whether one or more fractions presented in the plasma would enhance or not the growth of tubercle bacilli to a comparable or greater degree than that which could be obtained with whole serum, and discussed the effect produced by addition of bovine serum and 12 bovine plasma fractions to a synthetic medium on the subsurface growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. According to the results mentioned above, of the 12 plasma fractions investigated, only one fraction, proantithrombin, could stimulate the growth of the organisms to the same degree as whole serum. The purpose of this paper is to report the effect of bovine serum, especially its albumin fraction, and egg albumin on the stimulation of the growth of acid fast bacilli by addition of bovine serum and egg albumin to the synthetic media.
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