The Partial Purification of the Lethal Toxin of Clostridium Histolyticum *

Although several bacterial toxins have been prepared in highly purified form (c.f. Pappenheimer,6 Lamanna et al,,' and Pillemer8), comparatively little effort has been made in this direction with the toxins of the gas gangrene organism C. histolyticurm. Weinberg and Seguinll demonstrated that it could be precipitated with ammonium sulfate, and made the observation that ethanol destroys the toxic activity. Stewart9 prepared stable toxin preparations by precipitating culture filtrates with saturated ammonium sulfate, followed by drying over phosphorous pentoxide. Aside from these reports, there is no further information, to the author's knowledge, concerning possible means of concentrating the toxin. This study was undertaken in an attempt to determine which of the usual methods of separating proteins could be applied to the lethal toxin of C. histolyticum and attempts a comparison of the products obtained by the various methods.