Studies on the Nutrition and Metabolism of Pasteurella pestis.

Abstract

Although Pasteurella pestis has been the subject of a great deal of medical and immunological research, very little work has been done on the physiology of the organism itself. During recent years, attempts have been made to apply technics used in the study of bacterial metabolism to certain pathogenic organisms. The experiments reported in this paper were designed to establish the basic growth requirements of the plague bacillus, and to investigate to some extent the nature of its dissimilatory processes.Rao1 claims that 3 amino acids, cystine, phenylalanine, and proline, are essential for the development of P. pestis, and that haematin and riboflavin may be considered as accessory growth factors. However, he does not give evidence that the organism can grow with a mixture of these compounds alone, and provides neither a carbon nor a nitrogen source other than amino acids in most of his media. In an excellent study dealing with the nutrition of the members of the genus Pasteurella, Berkman2 could find no...