Comparison of Growth of Trichophyton interdigitale on Wool Fabric With and Without Additional Nutritive Media

Abstract

GROWTH OF Trich;op/ayto.Fz interdigitde ON WOOL 729 for agglutinins. Of the 8 carp that survived until the tenth week, at death, 2 had titers of 120, 2 had titers of 1 :@, one had a titer of 1 $30, and one of 1 640 (see table). The remaining fish died during the first 2 weeks of the experiment and had no agglutinins.In earlier experiments it has been shown that carp in nature do not have these agglutinins.The other fish, adult rainbow and brown trout, held in 10°C running water, were subjected to weekly injections of 1 ml of Bwt. sdnzlonicida4 vaccine containing approximately 5 billion heat-killed virulent bacteria. Because of the conditions under which they were held, few trout survived longer than 5 weeks, and most of them died during the second and third weeks. Post mortem blood samples taken after the first week showed agglutinins, the results being recorded in the table. It will be noted that a number of trout had no agglutinins; but most of these died early in the study. Three of 74 control animals were shown to have titers as high as 1:80.This does not necessarily indicate the presence of natural agglutinins. The presence of agglutinins for Bmt. salnzonicidu in these trout, which had received no vaccine injections, is more readily explained by the fact that these animals have been exposed to trout furunculosis throughout most of their several years of life. It is very possible that the antibody has been developed in response to this natural exposure of the trout to the infection.These experiments indicate that agglutinin production takes place at 10°C. It is believed that earlier investigators failed to detect this phenomenon because their animals were not given the antigen over a long enough period of time.Experiments are now in progress with gold fish, which tolerate extremes of teniperature, to determine the effect of temperature on the rate of agglutinin production.

The Digestion of Human Hair Keratin by Microsporum canis Bodin

“…The ability of ringworm fungi to grow in vitro on such tissues has long been known. Thus Bonar & Dryer (1932), and Rogers, Hirschmann & Humfeld (1940) cultivated various dermatophytes on wool; Macfadyen (1894), Nannizzi (1926), and Tate (1929a) on feathers; Roberts (1894), Bonar & Dryer (1932), and Williams (1934aand Williams ( , b, 1935 on human and other animal hair. Growth on such complex substrata as hair, feathers and nail cannot be considered conclusive proof of the keratinophilic nature of ringworm fungi in view of the associated compounds which occur with the keratin in these materials.…”

Microbiological Degradation of Wool

“…I t is an im p o rta n t coro llary o f th is relatio n sh ip betw een p H and d eco m p o sitio n o f wool th a t, since th e course o f th e p H an d p ro d u c tio n o f enzym es m ay be d e p e n d e n t on c u ltu ra l conditions, wool dige stio n m ay be sim ilarly d e p e n d e n t. I t has been show n ex p erim e n ta lly th a t n u tritio n a l facto rs influence m icrobiological a tta c k on wool [37,49]. As a consequence it is n ecessary to consider th e influence o f cul tu r a l co n d itio n s in th e assessm en t o f wool d eg rad in g p o te n tia l, and it is em p h asised th a t th e d a ta p re se n te d here should n o t be in te r p re te d as re p re se n tin g th e full wool d eg rad in g p o te n tia l o f th e isolates ex am in ed .…”