Isolation and Properties of a Macromolecular, Water-Soluble, Immuno-Adjuvant Fraction from the Cell Wall of Mycobacterium smegmatis |
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| Authors: | Arlette Adam, Rita Ciorbaru, Jean-Fran ois Petit, Edgar Lederer |
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| Affiliation: | 1.Institut de Biochimie, Université Paris-Sud, 91- Orsay, France. |
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| Abstract: | Trypsin- and chymotrypsin-treated delipidated cell walls of Mycobacterium smegmatis were digested overnight with lysozyme. The water-soluble products thus obtained were filtered on a column of Sephadex G-50; the first peak, excluded from the column, has immunological adjuvant activity. The material of the excluded peak is obtained after lyophilization as a snow-white, fluffy material, soluble in water and insoluble in organic solvents. It behaves as a slightly polydisperse macromolecule in an ultracentrifuge, with an approximate molecular weight of 20,000. All the constituents of this material are typical bacterial cell-wall constituents; thus, the water-soluble adjuvant is considered to be an "oligomer" of the cell wall.When added to Freund's incomplete adjuvant with an antigen (e.g., ovalbumin) and injected into hind-foot pads of guinea pigs, this water-soluble adjuvant increases the amount of precipitating antibodies and induces hypersensitivity to ovalbumin and the biosynthesis of gamma(2)-type precipitating antibodies. The water-soluble material has a stronger adjuvant activity than equal amounts of whole bacteria, cell walls, or wax D, and seems to be the first well-defined, water-soluble, adjuvant-active fraction isolated from Mycobacteria. |
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