On the electrical charge of the native proteins and the agglutinins / by Cyrus W. Field and Oscar Teague.

  • Field, Cyrus West.
Date:
[1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the electrical charge of the native proteins and the agglutinins / by Cyrus W. Field and Oscar Teague. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    tained in various body fluids. Their method consisted in treatings the fluid with electro-negative (arsenic sulphide) and electro-posi- tive (ferric hydrate) inorganic colloids and their conclusions were based upon the fact that colloids of opposite sign when brought together form precipitates. Thus they found that the peritoneal fluid of the horse contains only electro-positive colloids, while the pericardial fluid contains those of both signs; that blood plasma contains both positive and negative albumins with positive and neg- ative globulins, whereas the serum contains only the positive glob- ulin along with albumins of both signs; that the fluid of a tuber- cular abscess deprived of its leucocytes contains only electro-negative colloids; that the amniotic fluid contains both positive and negative albumins, but only negative globulins. From these experiments Iscovesco concludes that there are no colloids which do not bear a distinct electrostatic charge. Since our method gave no indication of the presence of an electro- negative albumin in normal serum, we are inclined to believe that Iscovesco by his manipulations produced a change in sign of the charge carried by certain proteins and that all of his findings are therefore not applicable to the proteins originally present in the fluids he investigated. In our previous work with tetanus toxin we investigated only the tetanospasmin and its antibody; we have since shown by testing the agar extracts for their lytic or antilytic action on horse cells that both tetanolysin and antitetanolysin travel toward the cathode under the influence of an electric current. Having determined the electrical charge of toxin and antitoxin, we next applied the same method to an investigation of the agglutinins. The agar was divided into one centimeter lengths; the agglu- tinin was found to have traveled seven centimeters into the cathode agar, the anode agar remaining free of agglutinin. The first cen- timeter length was extracted with five cubic centimeters of water and this extract would still agglutinate at a dilution of I : ioo. The specific agglutinins investigated travel toward the cathode. These results are diametrically opposed to those of Biltz, Much and Siebert,6 who are the only workers, so far as we know, who * Zeit. fur diatet. und phyckal. Ther., 1905, viii, IQ.