Bacteriology". — "On the nature and the significance of Volutin 

 in Yeast-cells". By Miss M. A, van Herwkrden M.D. (Com- 

 municated by Prof. C. A. Pekelharing). 



(Communicated in the meeting of April 27, 1917). 



At tfie same time when the improvements in the technique of 

 microscopical science enabled investigators to demonstrate a nucleus 

 in a number of so-called non-nucleated unicellular organisms, atten- 

 tion was called to the presence of basophilic granules in the cell- 

 plasma of bacteria, hypho- and blastomycetes, algae and |»rolozoa, 

 which behave towards various reagents in a similar way. Where 

 there is a cell-nucleus, as is the case with the greater part of these 

 unicellular organisms, these granules are disposed apart from it, and 

 as to the affinity to stains they do not completely correspond with 

 the chromatin of the nucleus. 



Originally Babes looked upon these basophilic granules in bacteria 

 as spores and described them afterwards as "Corpuscules métachro- 

 matiques" '), a name still in common use in the French literature 

 up to this day. In Germany they are called "volulin-granules" since 

 A. Meyer's'') extended investigation of their chemical nature. The 

 name was borrowed from the Spirillum volutans, in which one of 

 Meyer's pupils, Grimme') found the granules. Now, if we consider 

 that this Spirillum volutans is only one out of many hundreds of 

 bacteria, moulds, and algae in which similar corpuscles are found, 

 the term is, surely, not well chosen. The objection to the term 

 "metachromatic corpuscles" is that the granules or drops under 

 consideration do not under all conditions stain metachromatically 

 with methylene-blue, as also Meyer has remarked, and also that 

 — as will be seen lower down — whether or no a change into 

 a red-violet tint occurs, may, with most granules, depend not only 

 on the condition of the cultures, but also in a great measure on 

 the source of the methylene-blue preparation. In this paper I shall, 



1) Zeitschr. f. Hygiene. Bd. XX, p. 412. 



2) Botanische Zeitung J 904, p. 113. 



3) Zentralblatt. f BaklerioJ. Bd. XXXII 1902, p. 172. 



