On the Identification by the Specificity of Culture Filtrates of the Antibiotics from Actinomyces By

In the first step of our systematic study of antagonistic actinomyces, we have selected 360 active ones out of 1800 strains by the streak plate method using Sta. aureus 209-P, B. subtilis NRRL 588, B. anthracis (Ume zawa strain), E. coli (Umezawa strain), SM (Streptomycin) resistant E. c oli (Umezawa strain), Alkaligenes faecalis, Shigella sonnei, Ps. aeruginosa, K . pneumoniae, My. avium. My. smegmatis and My. phlei as test bacteria (so called "Primary screening") and classified them into the following 4 groups.1)2) 1st Group Inhibitory to Gram positive, negative and acid-fast organisms ... 201 (56%) 2nd Group Inhibitory to Gram positive and acid-fast organisms ............... 130 (36%) 3rd Group Inhibitory to Gram positive bacteria only .............................. 14 (4%) 4th Group Inhibitory to acid-fast bacteria only .......................................... 15 (4%) As it is scarcely possible and useless to cultivate all strains of active actinomyces on fluid media and to isolate the antibiotics in chemically pure forms, and as it is very reasonable to assume that the nature of the antibiotic substances may be anticipated from the characteristics of culture filtrates of their own parent strains, in other words, to assume the culture filtrates of the active actinomyces as crude water solutions of the final antibiotic substances, and as it seems, therefore, very probable to make an identification of the antibiotics by investigation of specific properties of culture filtrates, we selected 58 representative strains out of 201 belong ing to the 1st group actinomyces and cultivated them on the surface of semisolid culture media and their culture filtrates were tested by the follow-