Abstract
SEVERAL investigators have reported the formation of polysaccharide material by sterile filtrates obtained from various species of spore-forming bacilli. Thus in 1910 Beijerinck1, using viscosaceharase, an enzyme present in filtered preparations of B. mesentericus, observed the formation of slime on a sucrose-agar medium. In 1930 Harrison et al.2isolated this enzyme and showed that the slime was a levan. Dienes3, working with Oerskov's milk-bacillus and with organisms of the subtilis group, demonstrated that sterile extracts of these organisms could form from sucrose extra-bacterial granules of a polysaccharide nature. He, too, was probably dealing with a levan-synthesizing enzyme which has now been isolated in an active form from Aerobacter4.
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References
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Daker and Stacey, Biochem. J., 32, 1946 (1938).
Peat, Schlüchterer, and Stacey, J. Chem. Soc., 581 (1938).
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STACEY, M. Enzymatic Production of Bacterial Poiysaccharides. Nature 149, 639 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/149639a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/149639a0
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