BACTERIAL CELLULAR SUBSTANCE 73 



The reducing carbohydrate is present in the bacterial 

 cellular substance examined in this laboratory in a minimum 

 of something over 10 per cent.; in the colon haptophor in 

 about 24 per cent. ; and in precipitate G from the haptophor 

 in about 44 per cent. So far, we have not obtained it free 

 from phosphorus. The percentage of the other furfurol 

 giving body we have no means of determining even approxi- 

 mately, although we can safely say that the amount is 

 much smaller. The one yielding a reducing sugar probably 

 exists in the nucleic acid group as a pentose. 



Nuclein Bodies. In her work on sarcina lutea, Wheeler 1 

 makes the following statement: "So far as the xanthin 

 bases are concerned, Nishimura 2 found 0.17 per cent, of 

 xanthin, 0.08 per cent, of adenin, and 0.14 per cent, of 

 guanin in his water bacillus. It has been suggested that in 

 Nishimura's experiments these bases might have come 

 from the potato upon which his organism was grown, but 

 inasmuch as the potato contains only a very small per- 

 centage of protein, this is not likely. Lustig and Galleotti 3 

 report guanin obtained from the pest bacillus, and Galleotti 4 

 says that a nucleoprotein separated from the bacillus 

 ranicidus yielded xanthin bases, although the percentage 

 of nitrogen was low. 



"I have gone through the process of testing for xanthin 

 bases four times. Three times the acid extracts were 

 carefully precipitated with powdered silver nitrate crystals 

 until a drop of the solution gave a yellow instead of a white 

 precipitate with barium hydrate. The precipitate was 

 filtered out, washed, dried, and then worked up for xanthin 

 bases. The fourth time the process was almost the same, 

 the difference being that 33^ per cent, acid extract had 

 been made. This was first almost neutralized with barium 

 hydrate, the barium sulphate filtered out, carefully washed 

 out and boiled with water, and then the slightly acid 

 extract was precipitated with silver sulphate instead of 

 silver nitrate. The first silver nitrate precipitate was 



1 Trans. Assoc. Amer. Phys., 1902, xxvii, 265. 



2 Loc. cit. 3 Loc. cit. 4 Loc. cit. 



