Bacterial Variation

[摘要] The study of the antigenic characters of bacteria has progressed rapidly within the last few years. Investigators have realized that in working with whole cultures of organisms they were dealing with a mass of varied and complex characters.Andrewes (1922) was the first to observe two distinct antigens in the Salmonella group. By plating his stock cultures he was able to obtain two entities. The cultures arising from certain colonies he found to be specific and incapable of reacting with any immune sera other than those prepared from cultures of the homologous type. The second antigen, found to be present in an almost pure state in other colonies, was non-specific and reacted with all of the types of the group, agglutinating as readily and in as high dilutions with heterologous types as with the homologous.Andrewes was able to prepare specific or non-specific sera with these strains, depending upon the particular substrains used.

[学科分类] 生物科学（综合）