Antibiotic studies originated from the observation of antagonistic relation of microorganisms. However, according to Gottlieb and others, the role of antibiotics in antagonism in nature is rather doubtful. There is almost no observation on antagonism between rickettsia and streptomyces, yet the products of the latter, chloramphenicol, aureomycin and terramycin, inhibit the multiplication of the former. Existence of many antibiotics and vitamins in the culture of microorganisms suggests that microorganisms produce various substances which influence a certain course of metabolites processes and inhibit or promote the growth of microorganisms. Among path.ogenes, virus is the particular one in the point of the modus of the multiplication. It multiplies only in the living cell, therefore, its multiplication seems to require some energy-rich metabolic products which can not be taken out of the cell, or to depend upon certain metabolic reactions of the living cell. Though the modus of the multiplication is a particular one as a whole, each of the separate processes may not be particular but it may resemble a certain course of the metabolic processes found in rickettsia and other microorganisms. Microorganisms, which have been found to produce substances inhibiting the growth of other microorganisms or rickettsia, may produce substances which influence a certain chemical process necessary for the virus multiplication.
Several literatures concerning antiviral effects of B. subtilis, A. aerogenes and yeast are cited in the book written by waksman. Horsfall and others found that a polysaccharide of Friedlander bacillus causes inhibition of multiplication of pneumonia virus of mice and mumps virus, but not influenza viruses and Newcastle disease virus. The antiviral effects of bacterial and other polysaccharides are summarized by Horsf all and Ginsberg. It is interesting that their effects are specific to a certain group of viruses. The specific relation of certain substances to viruses is also reported by Kochi and others, and Groupé and other. An antibiotic, viscosin, produced by Pseudoinonas viscosa, which inhibits the growth of acid fast bacteria, inhibits markedly the virus of infectious bronchitis of chickens, and weakly the virus of murine influenza. Ehrlicin, a product of an organism resembling Streptomyces lavendulae, inhibits viruses of influenza and infectious bronchitis but not vaccinia virus. These studies indicate that a certain product of microorganisms is inhibitorily effective to a certain group of viruses.
Among fungi, yeasts, streptomyces and bacteria, Streptomyces is the most fruitful source of antibiotics, particularly of antirickettsial substances. Rickettsia is the pathogene most closely related to virus. Therefore, the writers examined the culture filtrate of streptomyces strains for the antiviral effect both in vitro and in vivo and, as the result, thirteen strains producing a substance effective to western equine encephalomyelitis virus were discovered. Among these thirteen strains, twelve were found to be one same new species and another one was found to belong to Streptomyces rubescens. However, the antiviral substances obtained from these two species were extracted by the same process, appeared in the same fraction of the chromatography, showed the same color reactions, and consequently they were recognized as one same substance. We named this antiviral substance “Abikoviromycin”. When this substance is mixed with the virus and injected to mice intracerebrally, it inhibits the infection at the dilution of 1 in approximately 8, 000, 000. It is effective to viruses of western equine encephalomyelitis and eastern equine encephalomyelitis, but not those of Venezuela equine encephalomyelitis and Japanese B encephalitis. In this paper, characters of the strains and the extraction and nature of the antiviral substance are described.
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