The influence of partial inactivation upon the potency of the bacteriophage

Abstract

Bordet and Ciuca 1 believe that the bacteriophage phenomenon is a hereditary transmissible autolysis, in which the principle is generated by the bacteria themselves at a certain stage of their development under the influence of a similar lytic principle. Naturally, this conception requires the establishment of certain definite relationships between the amount of lytic principle which acts upon bacteria and the energy of the principle generated by bacteria. In their studies of these relationships Bordet and Ciuca made the following observations: The addition of a rather small amount of anti-colon bacteriophage to B. coli will result in only slight lysis. Furthermore, this minimal amount of the principle 2 will induce the bacteria to generate a new principle of a weak potency. No matter what amount of this weak principle is now used, only a weak lysis will occur and a weak principle will be generated. To explain these observations these authors assume that the introduction of a very small amount of lytic principle (quantitative reduction) leads to its considerable dispersion among the bacterial cells. Therefore each bacterial cell is only very weakly impressed by this dispersed principle and thus reacts with a generation of a new principle of low energy (qualitative reduction).

It occurred to the author of this paper that instead of dispersing the lytic principle among the bacterial cells, it would be of interest to study the relationship of a partially inactivated lytic principle to the energy of generation of this principle by bacterial cells.

A method had to be chosen for partial inactivation of the lytic principle.

Since it is known that a certain hydrogen ion concentration (pH 2.8) inactivates completely the lytic principle, it was thought that a certain range of pH close to the inactivating zone could be found in which the lytic principle would be only partially inactivated.