The Chemical Composition of the Active Principle of Tuberculin

[摘要] “Although the antigenic capacity of a protein depends on the entire large colloidal molecular structure, its specificity seems to reside in certain of the radicals of the molecule.” That this summarizing statement made by Wells (1) can be applied to the active principle of tuberculin, appears from the experiments described in this paper.It has been shown previously (2) that the capacity to elicit a tuberculin skin reaction may reside in a whole series of molecules of widely differing molecular sizes, ranging from about 25,000 down to about 2,000, the latter being the smallest active molecule so far isolated. All of these molecules have been obtained from the protein fractions of tuberculin, and they are, in fact, the tuberculin protein or derivatives of this protein molecule.

[学科分类] 生物科学（综合）