Study of Carbohydrate and Protein Fractions of Meningococci

Abstract

Polysaccharide and "nucleoproteins" were prepared from some of the Gram-negative cocci, and immunological-cross reactions were studied with their specific immune sera, adsorbed and non-adsorbed by the different chemical fractions. The polysaccharide and the "nucleoprotein" obtained from meningococci of the different types, gonococci, and from Micrococcus catarrhalis, have similar immunological properties and are not type-specific. The carbohydrate-precipitable substance in immune sera appears late (4th mo. or more) in the immunization of animals. There is no parallelism between the agglutination and polysaccharide precipitin tests.