162 HARLYN HALVORSON 



sporulating bacteria would provide some ideas as to how the cyclical changes 

 in their enzymic constitution are brought about. 



I was interested in an observation recently reported by Falcone (1955) 

 that spores of B. subtilis oxidized L-alanine producing hydrogen peroxide, 

 and that hydrogen peroxide itself stimulated loss of heat resistance. We 

 have not been able to repeat this observation with our strain of B. subtilis. 

 It seems desirable that other strains of B. subtilis should be tested. 



We wondered, at one stage, whether there was a burst of synthesis of Col 

 during germination and attempted to demonstrate this. We assayed Col in 

 extracts from disintegrated resting and germinated spores of B. subtilis 

 in the usual way using Haemophilus parainfluenzae (Powell, J. F., unpub- 

 lished results) . In duplicate experiments we found that the Col content of 

 extracts from germinated spores was actually lower than that from resting 

 spores. 



References 



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Chiax, P. and G. Roncoli. 3950. A propos de la variabilite du systeme des 

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Chance, B. 1952. Spectra and reaction kinetics of respiratory pigments of 

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Falcone, G. 1955. Metabolism della L-alanina e germinazione delta spore. 

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Keilin, D. and E. F. Hartree. 1949. Effect of low temperature on the absorp- 

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Smith, L. 1954. Bacterial cytochrome. Bact. Rev. 18: 106-130. 



