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Enzyme Action in Lower Organisms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2014

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The soluble ferments or enzymes have always aroused the deepest interest, partly from the mystery which enshrouded their mode of action, partly from the importance of the processes with which they are associated. The peculiar power which each possesses of decomposing apparently unlimited quantities of a specific medium, without itself being used up in the process, has occasioned the confusion of enzyme action with processes truly vital in their nature. Although this action had only been demonstrated as subserving an alimentary function, its aid was invoked to explain many of 'the more obscure phenomena of biology. The series of decompositions which carbohydrates may undergo, known as the alcoholic, lactic, and butyric fermentations, were long ascribed to it. Even when Pasteur had proved that these processes were always correlated with a vital fact —the growth and multiplication of living cells—Traube, Hoppe- Seyler, and Liebig still contended that these might act only indirectly by the formation of soluble ferments. The analogy between fermentation and the infectious processes is so striking that the latter have long been grouped together under the term zymotic diseases, and these we are every day coming to recognise more and more as parasitic diseases conditioned by micro-organisms. Here again, however, many tend to regard the microbe as not acting directly; but through the production of soluble ferments.

Type
Proceedings 1889-90
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1891

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References

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note * page 39 Staphylococcus aureus, when obtained from an abscess, must frequently be cultivated for some time before the pigment faculty returns; other organisms when exposed to the action of the tissues exhibit a temporary loss of the enzyme function. In both cases this may be attributed, in part to an adaptation to the conditions present in the animal organism, and in part to the attenuating influence exerted by the cells.

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note * page 45 Organic matter in nature is, in the process known as putrefaction, resolved by microbes into its simpler constituents, which in the protoplasm of plants are again built up into complex organic bodies. But a part of the organic matter undergoing this process is built up into the substance of the microbes. These, when dead, appear to undergo a process of disintegration, to be ascribed in all probability to the action of their own enzymes, the cellulose ferment which Vignal has found to be secreted by ‘potato-bacilli’ exerting its action on the cell wall, and the peptonising enzyme upon the albuminoid constituents. In this way the constant circulation of organic matter between the animal and vegetable kingdoms may proceed without intermission.

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note † page 47 Since then, it has been shown by Woodhead and myself (Comptes Rendus, Dec. 23, 1889) that, if the toxine is antagonised, the tissues are able to come into action, and we have either complete recovery, or the disease is mitigated or prolonged in its course; the microbes on the death of the animal being then found to have undergone a process of attenuation by the action of the cells.Google Scholar

note ‡ page 47 ‘Sur la concurrence vitale des bacilles la fièvre Typhoids et du bacille Charbon,‘ Giorn. Internaz., ix., 1887.Google Scholar

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note * page 51 This need not be entirely attributed to the direct influence of the temperature on the catalysing processes; the protoplasm, as we have already seen, exhibits a selective action as regards the different substances offered it as food, and it may be that when one process is partially interfered with, a similar power may come into play, and this would exaggerate the direct effect of the temperature. Correlated with these perhaps only quantitative changes which may be catabolic or anabolic in character, the metabolism as a whole may become more or less altered, so that the centre of gravity of the organism becomes as it were shifted. It is to this, probably, that we must refer the fact noted by Schottelius that, when Prodigiosus is grown for a certain time at the higher temperature, it loses the faculty of producing its pigment even when grown at a lower temperature. In a more recent communication he states that, when grown sufficiently long at the lower temperature, the property returned, so that we have here an example of that form of ‘reversion’ which Romanes has recently so ably discussed. Dallinger has found that Infusoria. can be gradually accustomed to withstand very high temperatures, and this adaptation may be associated with a similar change in the metabolism. The ‘tolerance’ which Kossiakoff (Annales de I'Institut Pasteur, No. 10, 1887) has shown that microbes can acquire towards antiseptic agents when previously cultivated in more dilute solutions, is to be referred chiefly to the organisms becoming gradually accustomed to exist without those ‘associations’ and ‘dissociations’ which the chemical substance tends to inhibit, and to a corresponding development of others to take their place. The permanence of this new habit of the organism, when grown again under the old conditions, will depend on the more or less stable nature of the new combination or complex functions which has been evolved. This modification of the organism as a whole, which may result from a change in one direction, and is dependent on

note * page 52 Journal of the Chemical Society, 1888Google Scholar