Fermentation of Glucose by Mycoplasma Mycoides and its Effect on Viability

Abstract

Since broth culture vaccine prepared from the TI avianised strain of Mycoplasma mycoides var. mycoides (Piercy and Knight, 1956) at the forty-fifth egg passage, was first prepared at Muguga in July 1962 and subsequent large-scale production in July 1964, it has been grown in modified Newing's tryptose broth (Gourlay, 1964). During 1964 a few batches of broth culture vaccine were prepared from the T2 avianised strain of M. mycoides (Piercy and Knight, 1956) at the thirty-third egg passage. These batches were produced in a manner identical to that used for the large-scale production of TI broth culture vaccine (Brown, Gourlay and MacLeod, 1965). During routine titrations of the vaccine it was noticed, however, that the T2 vaccine did not maintain its titre of viability as well as the TI vaccine and it was decided to investigate the reasons for this. Investigation showed that the loss of viability was associated with excessive lowering of the pH, which was also associated with the glucose content of the medium; furthermore, different strains of M. mycoides varied in their ability to ferment glucose. The following paper gives details of these studies.