Variation with Age in the Resistance of Bacterial Cells

Abstract

IN an article in Nature of April 28, p. 666, Sir Cyril Hinshelwood discusses some of the possible explanations for deviations from the logarithmic order of death sometimes shown among bacteria exposed to disinfecting agents. Where the final stages of decline are abnormally protracted (that is, where there is a resistant ‘tail’ of organisms), he suggests that the most obvious explanation would be the presence of some cells of abnormally high resistance, and that these might originate from the interruption of growth at the appropriate stage in the cell-cycle. He considers it possible that at certain phases in the growth of each individual cell there might be a stage of maximum resistance, possibly when the internal condition of the vegetative cell bears the maximum resemblance to a spore.