Abstract
Paracoccidioides brasiliensis is the causative agent of South American blastomycosis. McKinnon and Vinelli1, and Carbonell et al.2, suggested in their histochemical investigations that the yeast form of this fungus may contain glycogen. The present investigation deals with the biochemical identification of glycogen in the yeast form of P. brasiliensis. The fungus used (strain No. 8159 of the Instituto Nacional de Tuberculosis, Caracas, Venezuela) was originally isolated from a lymph node in a human systemic infection and cultured on brain heart infusion agar (Baltimore Biological Laboratory) with human blood (10 per cent) and antibiotics (penicillin, 20 units per ml.; streptomycin, 400 µg per ml.) at 37° C. The fungus was collected on the fifth day of culture, and washed 4 times with distilled water by centrifugation (500 g, 5 min). After extracting the lipids by means of a mixture of ethanol and ether (3:1), the fungus, suspended in distilled water, was disintegrated in a Branson sonifier at 20 kc/s for 20 min. The disruption of the cell material was completed by treatment in a Waring blender for 1 h. The polysaccharide was isolated according to the method of Abdel-Akher and Smith3, that is, extraction with boiling water, removal of proteins by trichloroacetic acid, and purification by repeated precipitation from aqueous solution with ethanol. From 7.04 g of vacuum-dried fungus material, a polysaccharide fraction (126 mg), acetone-soluble lipids (977 mg) and acetone-insoluble lipids (110 mg) were obtained.
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KANETSUNA, F., CARBONELL, L. Glycogen in Yeast Form of Paracoccidioides brasiliensis. Nature 208, 686 (1965). https://doi.org/10.1038/208686a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/208686a0
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