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Studies on the Minimum Reproducible Unit of Staphylococcal L‐Forms
Author(s) -
Okuda Kenji,
Takahashi Toyozoh,
Tadokoro Ichiro,
Eda Tohru
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
microbiology and immunology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.664
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1348-0421
pISSN - 0385-5600
DOI - 10.1111/j.1348-0421.1977.tb02802.x
Subject(s) - filtration (mathematics) , membrane , ribosome , fractionation , biophysics , membrane filter , chromatography , biology , chemistry , biochemistry , rna , mathematics , statistics , gene
The minimum size of a reproducible unit of staphylococcal L‐forms was determined by filtration and electron microscopic methods. Ultrathin sections of an induced strain of Staphylococcal L‐forms (STA‐EMT‐1) in liquid medium revealed several types of structures, all of which were bound by a single membrane and most of which possessed ribosome‐like granules. Many of the small granules were less than 0.3 μm and were attached to the membrane of the large bodies. Using a serial filtration method, it was observed that viable L‐forms were still detected in 0.22 μm filtrate, but the viable cell count of L‐forms decreased in number with the decrease in pore size of membrane filters. A fractionation technique, using L‐forms filtered through a membrane filter with a 0.45 μm pore size, revealed that there were three classes of small bodies but only the first class with ribosome‐like granules over approximately 0.2 μm in diameter seems to be able to reproduce.