Dissociation of Staphylococcus aureus

CONTENT ALERTS Receive: RSS Feeds, eTOCs, free email alerts (when new articles cite this article), more» Information about commercial reprint orders: http://jb.asm.org/site/misc/reprints.xhtml To subscribe to to another ASM Journal go to: http://journals.asm.org/site/subscriptions/ THE GENETIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DISSOCIANTS OF STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREIJS' Department of Bacteriology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Received for publication September 15, 1933 Downloaded from http://jb.asm.org/ on December 10, 2011 by deepdyve In the study of bacterial dissociation variations in pigment formation and in colonial and biochemical characteristics have been noted many times. As early as 1897, Newman reported the recovery of white colonies, differing in acid and indol production, from a strain of Staphylococcus aureus. Mellon and Caldwell (1926), studying a white strain of Staphylococcus, concluded that it was a common ancestor of Staphylococcus aureus and albus. More recently Pinner and Voldrich (1932), in a detailed study of six strains of Staphylococcus aureus, reported the isolation of four white, one lemon yellow, and one rose variant. In the same year, the authors obtained 11 variants from a single strain of Staphylococcus aureus, and the cultural characteristics of four of these were reported. The purpose of this work was to study the dissociation of different strains of Staphylococcus aureus and albus and to determine their genetic position and cultural stability. EXPERIMENTAL Two strains of Staphylococcus albus and four of Staphylococcus aureus were dissociated and the characteristics of their variants studied. All the strains, before dissociation was attempted, were plated repeatedly on agar plates to insure a pure culture....