A bacteriocin produced by certain M-type 49 Streptococcus pyogenes strains when incubated anaerobically.

Abstract

Bacteriocin production (P)-typing of 75 M-type 49 group-A streptococci obtained from a variety of epidemiological incidents in different countries gave no evidence of production under the usual aerobic test conditions. However, with anaerobic incubation, 28% of the strains gave a pattern of inhibitory activity against the indicator strains which was indistinguishable from that previously attributed to the bacteriocin, streptococcin A-FF22 (SA-FF22). Isolation and partial purification of the M type 49 bacteriocin (SA-M49) by freeze-thaw elution from anaerobically grown lawn cultures, followed by ammonium sulphate precipitation and Sephadex chromatography, showed the activity to be associated with a heat-stable proteinaceous molecule of molecular weight approximately 8000 - properties similar to those of SA-FF22. SA-FF22 and SA-M49 were found to have identical inhibitory spectra including immunity of the producer strains to the inhibitory activity of both the homologous and heterologous bacteriocin preparations. SA-M49 production occurred in some strains of phage subtypes II, III and provisional VI and, since it was a consistent property for all isolates from single outbreaks of infection, it provides a means of discriminating between strains of each of these three phage subtypes. There was no evidence of any increased incidence of SA-M49 production in M-type 49 strains associated with nephritic sequelae.