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. 1971 Nov;108(2):868–873. doi: 10.1128/jb.108.2.868-873.1971

Macromolecular Sieving by the Dormant Spore of Bacillus cereus1

Réne Scherrer a, T Cabrera Beaman a, Philipp Gerhardt a
PMCID: PMC247154  PMID: 5001873

Abstract

The threshold surface porosity in the dormant spore of Bacillus cereus strain T was assessed by measuring passive permeabilities to a series of polydisperse polyethylene glycol samples which increased in average molecular size. The apparent exclusion threshold at diffusional equilibrium corresponded to a polymer of number-average molecular weight (¯Mn) = 150,000 and equivalent hydrodynamic radius (¯rES) = 16 nm, which confirmed a previous report. However, analytical gel chromatography before and after uptake by the spores revealed that only the low molecular weight fractions in a polymer sample distribution were taken up. From graphical analyses of the changes in molecular weight distributions, a quasi-monodisperse exclusion threshold was determined corresponding to Mn = 8,000 and rES = 3.2 nm. Thus, the equivalent porosity in the limiting outer integument appeared much more restrictive than heretofore shown for spores, although still more open than the monodisperse equivalent for the cell wall of vegetative bacilli.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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