Abstract
Mould Inhibition of the Tubercle Bacillus IT is well known that Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin because a mould accidentally contaminated one of his plate cultures. Reference is made in the Lancet (632, Nov. 11, 1944) to the work of D. K. Miller and A. C. Rekate (Science, 100, 172; 1944), who found that the growth of a strain of the tubercle bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, was inhibited by a green mould of the Penicillium group, which accidentally grew on a culture of the tubercle bacillus stored in an icebox. The mould grew rapidly and well in other cultures of tubercle bacilli at room temperature, but it did not grow at all at 37° C. It grew faster and sporulated earlier on cultures of tubercle bacilli than on sterile media. It also grew in suspensions of human tubercle bacilli in saline at room temperature, and the authors failed to recover the tubercle bacilli from these suspensions later on. Experiments done by inoculation of guinea pigs suggested that some inhibition of growth had occurred, but were less definite. The mould grew well on tuberculin diluted as much as 1 in 10,000, and these dilutions of tuberculin thereafter failed to give positive skin tests in tuberculous guinea pigs. Suspensions of the mould inactivated 1 in 100 tuberculin in 2 hours, and the supernatant fluid obtained by centrifuging such suspensions also did this. When, however, the suspensions were passed through a Seitz filter, they did not inactivate the tuberculin. On the other hand, fluid media on which the mould had grown for 8–15 days had no effect on tuberculin or tubercle bacilli. Staphylococcus aureus grew on media on which the mould had grown and from which it bad been removed, so that it was concluded that the substance produced by the mould which inhibits tubercle bacilli is not similar to penicillin.
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Research Items. Nature 155, 208–209 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/155208a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/155208a0