The inhibition of the lecithinase of Clostridium perfringens by some reducing agents

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1950
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 361 KB
• Volume: 250
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-0032
• DOI: 10.1016/0016-0032(50)90614-4

✦ Synopsis

Although considerable work has been done on the lecithinase (alpha toxin) of Clostridium perfringens, several aspects of its behavior remain somewhat puzzling. For example, MacLennan and Macfarlane (1) have reported that C. perfringens lecithinase was strongly adsorbed by living muscle but that muscle removed from an animal within a few minutes after death did not adsorb lecithinase. It seemed to us that the property of muscle which would be most likely to change rapidly enough after death to cause this phenomenon would be the oxidation-reduction potential, which might be expected to drop rather sharply. Consequently, we investigated the effect of some reducing agents on the activity of the lecithinase of C. perfringens. The results of this investigation, which are reported here, indicate that lecithinase could be completely, and apparently irreversibly, inactivated by certain reducing agents.