The Characterization of Staphylococcal Toxins Ii. the Isolation and Characterization of a Homogeneous Staphylococcal Protein Possessing Alpha

Previous studies on the electrophoretic migration of the components of crude staphylococcal toxin (1) led to an attempt to isolate the staphylococcal alpha hemolysin by these methods. The isolation of a homogeneous toxin which possessed alpha hemolytic, dermonecrotic, lethal, and leucocidal activities would provide strong direct support for the "unitarian" theory, which holds that these four activities are actually different expressions of one toxic component. Further, the availability of purified alpha hemolysin would make possible a variety of studies which cannot be satisfactorily carried out using crude staphylococcal toxin. The importance of isolating and individually characterizing the various staphylococcal toxins has been emphasized by Dubos (2) and by Elek (3). The emphasis upon studying the toxins individually is prompted by the fact that much of the work using crude staphylococcal toxin is difficult to interpret, since there is no way of knowing whether the activity being studied is enhanced, unaffected, or inhibited by other components of the crude mixture.