FAMILY I. MYCOPLASMATACEAE 



923 



Habitat: From normal and diseased mice 

 so far as known. 



11. INIycoplasnia gullinariini Freundt, 

 1955. (A pleuropneumonia-like organism iso- 

 lated from the upper respiratory tract of a 

 fowl, Edward, Jour. Gen. Microbiol., 10, 

 1954, 52 and 53; Freundt, Internat. Bull, of 

 Bact. Nomen. and Taxon., 5, 1955, 73; 

 Borrelomyces (jaUinarum Freundt, ibid., 

 75.) 



gal.li.na'rum. L. fem.n. gallina a hen; 

 L. fem.gen.pl.n. gallinarum of hens. 



Morphological characters not recorded for 

 the type strain (cf. Comments) . Gram-nega- 

 tive. 



Horse-serum agar: A film and spots are 

 produced. 



Horse-blood agar: Hemolysis. 



Rabbit-serum agar: Good growth. 



Semi-solid media: Smooth growth 

 throughout. 



No acid from glucose. 



Methylene blue is reduced rather rapidly. 



Aerobic, facultatively anaerobic. 



Pathogenicity: Not tested for the repre- 

 sentative strain. 



Comments: The coccobacillary bodies of 

 fowl coryza described by Nelson were prob- 

 ably pleuropneumonia-like organisms (Nel- 

 son, Science, 82, 1935, 43; also see Jour. Exp. 

 Med., 63, 1936, 509 and 515; and ibid., 69, 

 1939, 199). Herick and Eaton (Jour. Bact., 

 50, 1945, 47) isolated a pleuropneumonia-like 

 organism as a contaminant of a pneumonia 

 virus which was being passaged in chick 

 embryos; broth cultures agglutinated 

 chicken erythrocj^tes as well as those of 

 other animals; hemagglutination inhibition 

 tests with sera of chickens from the hatchery 

 that had furnished the eggs showed an ap- 

 preciable antibody level to the organism in a 

 fairly high percentage of the chickens. Re- 

 port of pleuropneumonia-like organisms 

 from egg-passage material of the agent (s) 

 of a chronic respiratory disease (CRD) of 

 chickens and of turkey sinusitis (TS), which 

 were originally regarded as viruses by van 

 Roekel, Olesiuk and Peck (Amer. Jour. Vet. 

 Res., 13, 1952, 252), was made by Markham 

 and Wong (Poult. Sci., 31 , 1952, 902) ; follow- 

 ing a series of thirteen successive subcul- 



tures in artificial media, the organisms pro- 

 duced mortality and microscopic findings 

 in embryonated eggs that were typical for 

 the above agents, and suspensions prepared 

 from yolk sacs harvested from these em- 

 l)ryos caused sinusitis in turkeys. Lecce 

 and Sperling (Vet. Ext. Quart., Univ. of 

 Pennsylvania, No. 134, 1954, 96) were able 

 to cultivate pleuropneumonia-like organ- 

 isms from the tracheae of chickens which 

 had long since recovered from symptoms of 

 CRD and from asymptomatic chickens that 

 had been in contact with sick birds, but they 

 were not able to cultivate these organisms 

 from normal birds obtained from flocks that 

 had never been associated with CRD. They 

 also showed (Cornell Vet., U, 1954, 441) 

 that pleuropneumonia-like organisms were 

 more commonly found in the tracheae than 

 in the lungs and air sacs of sick chickens. 

 White, Wallace and Alberts (Poult. Sci., S3, 

 1954, 500) studied two strains of the CRD 

 agent and one strain of the TS agent ob- 

 tained from van Roekel. Broth cultures 

 from the 22nd serial transfer in an artificial 

 medium were inoculated into the infraorbi- 

 tal sinuses and into the tracheae of 10-week- 

 old chickens and turkeys. The latter de- 

 veloped sinusitis 9 to 12 days after exposure, 

 and at necropsy performed one month after 

 exposure, tracheitis and signs of inflamma- 

 tion of the thoracic and abdominal air sacs 

 were demonstrated. In the chickens, a catar- 

 rhal inflammation of the nasal membranes 

 and tracheae was observed, while there were 

 no external symptoms of sinusitis and no 

 gross pathological changes in the air sacs. 

 Hemagglutination tests with broth cultures 

 and chicken and turkey erythrocytes were 

 positive and were inhibited both by homol- 

 ogous and heterologous sera of the infected 

 birds. Sera from apparently normal birds 

 showed a slight inhibition. Structures simi- 

 lar to those characteristic of the pleuro- 

 pneumonia group were demonstrated in 

 electron micrographs prepared from broth 

 cultures: single elementary bodies varying 

 from 0.1 to 0.5 micron, and large and small 

 filaments, some of which contained close-set 

 spherical bodies that were about the size 

 of single cells. Strains from chickens and 

 turkeys could not be distinguished morpho- 



