BACTERIAL CELLULAR SUBSTANCE 59 



minutes with 10 per cent, potassium hydroxide and found 

 that this digested the bacteria but left "the film" appar- 

 ently unchanged. The residue was washed with dilute 

 hydrochloric acid, then with water, and treated with 

 bromine according to Miiller's method for obtaining cellu- 

 lose. The product seemed to be identical with that from 

 cotton, dissolving in ammoniacal copper solution and in 

 strong sulphuric acid. It gave a reducing sugar, dextro- 

 rotatory, even when grown on media containing only levoro- 

 tatory substances. Analysis showed a close agreement 

 with cellulose, and Brown regarded this as a cellulose proper, 

 differing from the metacellulose usually found in yeast and 

 the fungi. No trace of dextran was found. Brown regarded 

 the formation of cellulose as a process of assimilation and 

 not of fermentation. Bendix 1 extracted dried bacilli with 

 5 per cent, hydrochloric acid over the free flame, cooled, 

 made alkaline, then acidulated with acetic acid in order to 

 precipitate the protein. The filtrate gave with phenyl- 

 hydrazin an osazone which when purified melted at 153 

 to- 155, thus showing it to be pentosazone. It gave the 

 orcin and optical tests for pentose. He obtained pentose 

 from diphtheria and tubercle bacilli, also from mixed fecal 

 bacteria, but not from the typhoid bacillus. The pentose 

 exists in the nucleoprotein. Aronson 2 found a nucleo- 

 protein containing pentose in alkaline extracts of diphtheria 

 bacilli. This author stated that the residue after complete 

 extraction with alkali contains carbohydrate which is 

 dextrorotatory and yields an osazone; it is neither cellulose 

 nor chitin. 



Meyer 3 came to the conclusion that in some species of 

 bacteria fat is stored up, while in others complex carbo- 

 hydrates take their place. One species grown on barley 

 gave a substance, colored blue by iodine, and easily soluble 

 in malt diastase and in saliva. Bacillus subtilis gave 

 a body that is colored red by iodine and is dissolved by 

 saliva, and on boiling with dilute sulphuric acid. Meyer 



1 Deutsch. med. Woch., 1901, xxvii, 18. 



2 Loc. cit. 3 Flora, 1889, 432. 



