TRANSFER OF PENICILLIN RESISTANCE IN PNEUMOCOCCI BY THE DESOXYRIBONUCLEATE DERIVED FROM RESISTANT CULTURES (original) (raw)

  1. Rollin D. Hotchkiss
  2. The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, New York

Excerpt

The process known in bacteriology as transformation has been demonstrated chiefly by the induction of heritable modifications in certain species-specific or type-specific antigens (Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty, 1944; Taylor, 1949; Austrian and MacLeod, 1949; Alexander and Leidy, 1951; Boivin, 1947). In each case, desoxyribonucleate-containing extracts from a donor strain of bacteria conferred one of the heritable properties of this strain upon a receptor when the latter was grown in the presence of the sterile extract. While such systems offer the possibility of studying the genetic relationships of the various antigens of Pneumococcus, for example, they seem still more uniquely suited to elucidate the broader biochemical principles which implicate nucleic acids in the genetic mechanisms of perhaps all forms of life. In particular, if desoxyribonucleate extracts were available which could induce several different transformations, it should be possible to study the inheritance of these different biological effects simultaneously. In work directed

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