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J Bacteriol. 1965 March; 89(3): 874-879
Copyright © 1965 American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Interaction of Viscid Material of Staphylococcus aureus with Specific Immune Serum

U .S. Veterans Administration Hospital, Department of Clinical Pathology of the Philadelphia General Hospital, Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, and the Henry Phipps Institute, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

ABSTRACT

MUDD, STUART (U.S. Veterans Administration Hospital, Philadelphia, Pa.), AND SAMUEL J. DECOURCY, JR. Interaction of viscid material of Staphylococcus aureus with specific immune serum. J. Bacteriol. 89:874–879. 1965.—Re-examination of the phenomenon of Price and Kneeland and of Wiley revealed the following. (i) The prototype "wound strain" of Wiley, and viscid-colony strains obtained by aging and selection of laboratory or field strains, differed in growth characteristics in liquid and solid media from the Smith encapsulated strain and from ordinary, unselected laboratory and field strains of coagulase-positive staphylococci. (ii) The wound strain and ordinary unselected strains, unlike the Smith encapsulated strain, did not exhibit capsules when examined in thin films of Pelikan Waterproof Drawing Ink. (iii) The phenomenon of Price and Kneeland and of Wiley is exhibited when the wound strain and other viscid-colony strains interact with anti-Wiley immune sera or various human sera. In our experience, this phenomenon was not exhibited by the Smith or by ordinary, unselected strains. (iv) The staphylococcal polysaccharide antigen previously characterized as the capsular substance of a Smith-like strain was completely different chemically and serologically from extracellular material prepared from the Wiley wound strain. We conclude that the viscid-colony strains are not, in fact, encapsulated, and that the phenomenon in question is a precipitation of extracellular material about the periphery of the cells.