SINGLE CELL INOCULATIONS WITH TREPONEMA PALLIDUM

Single Cell Inoculations with Treponema Pallidum

The injection of one or several Treponema pallidum into the testicles of rabbits does not induce syphilitic infection. A negative tissue transfer experiment does not preclude the presence of Treponema pallidum in the inoculum nor does it indicate the absence of syphilis in the source animal.

Cell-wall defective variants of Treponema pallidum.

Microbial variants possessing defective cell walls have attracted considerable interest in recentyears, because of the possibility of their having a role in the pathogenesis of disease. There is evidence that, in the infected host, a bacterium may undergo damage to its cell wall and assume a temporarily altered form with altered properties, yet remain capable of reversion to the parent bacteriu...

Shape of Treponema pallidum.

Treponema pallidum was found to be not helical, but a flat wave twisted into one to five different planes per cell.

Mucopolysaccharidase of Treponema pallidum.

Treponema pallidum (Nichols strain) exhibited mucopolysaccharidase activity. Acidic mucopolysaccharides were broken down more rapidly by viable treponemes than by heat-inactivated treponemes or membrane filtrates of treponemal suspensions. Ouchterlony immunodiffusion demonstrated the occurrence of antibodies to the hyaluronidase-like enzyme within syphilitic sera. After intratesticular inoculat...

Preliminary agglutination experiments with Treponema pallidum.