MICROBIOLOGY OF HIBERNATION IN GROUND SQUIRRELS 



periods of awakening. 



SCHMIDT: That is right. This would seem to be the logical 

 explanation, although Dempster reports viral replication with 

 hibernating bats. In connection with this, I asked Dr. Sulkin 

 about his bats; that is, whether they spontaneously arouse. You 

 see, they're quite a different animal in that they really don't 

 have a thermoregulatory mechanism. But ground squirrels do. 

 You can put ground squirrels in a cold room and if they are 

 ready to hibernate, they will. If they are not, you can keep them 

 there for a long period of time and they won't hibernate. Demp- 

 ster makes the point that these bats which he kept at 2^ C did 

 hibernate, and there was virus multiplication. Coxsackie B-3 

 was the agent he was using. In all fairness to Dempster, let 

 me briefly tell you what he has done. He has made quantitative 

 estimations of virus in squirrels by inoculating suckling mice 

 with dilutions of homogenates of various tissues. With the bats, 

 on the other hand, he reports only "isolation" or "no isolation". 

 He was able to recover the virus from the blood and certain 

 other tissues. I think that he considers viremia as being in- 

 dicative of viral replication. If we would discuss this with him, 

 which I have not done yet, we might be able to iron this out, 

 but ' certainly there is this possibility that this minor replic- 

 cation has occurred during these periods of arousal. 



NORTHEY: I am sorry to dig up a dead body here, but some- 

 thing is bothering me very much. Was it the consensus of this 

 group that protein metabolism resulting from an increase in 

 total food consumption directly affected antibody production? 

 I think this is a very fundamental point here. In other words, 

 can we say then that the cure for pheumococci pneumonia would 

 be an increase in food intake? 



CAMPBELL: I thought I tried to bring this point out when I 

 was talking. Very definitely there are two things involved. Mostly, 

 synthesis of antibody involves a breakdown of the antigen. As 

 I mentioned a while ago, Dixon has pointed out the possibility 

 that under stress of hyperimmunization, the body uses gamma 

 globulin. This is the source of amino acids. Under the normal 

 state it uses free amino acids, so metabolism must play a very 



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