On the electrical charge of the native proteins and the agglutinins / by Cyrus W. Field and Oscar Teague.

  • Field, Cyrus West.
Date:
[1907]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the electrical charge of the native proteins and the agglutinins / by Cyrus W. Field and Oscar Teague. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [Reprinted from Journal of Experimental Medicine, Vol. IX., No. 2, 1907.] ON THE ELECTRICAL CHARGE OF THE NATIVE PROTEINS AND THE AGGLUTININS. By CYRUS W. FIELD1 and OSCAR TEAGUE. (From the Research Laboratory, Department of Health, New York City.) In a previous paper2 it was shown that the particles of both toxin and antitoxin wandered under the influence of an electric current toward the cathode and that the reaction (acidity or alkalinity) of the solvent did not influence the direction of migration. Since Hardy3 and Pauli4 demonstrated that the proteins which they used were amphoteric, i. e., that they pass toward the anode in an alka- line medium and to the cathode in an acid one, there has been a tendency to generalize by assuming that all proteins behave in this manner. If such were the case, we pointed out, it would follow from our experiments that toxin and antitoxin are not true pro- teins. At the same time, however, we mentioned that from the few experiments in which this question had been considered, the pro- tein matter of the broth or serum seemed in every instance to travel with the toxin or antitoxin toward the cathode. Further experi- ments have confirmed this result. It was also shown that the pro- tein of normal horse serum and of non-toxic broth travels toward the cathode. Hence our work offers as yet no evidence either for or against the view that toxin and antitoxin are non-protein in nature. We maintain that the results which Hardy and Pauli obtained, working with denaturalized proteins, are in no wise applicable to the native proteins, but that these carry a distinct electrical charge and are not amphoteric. We are here in accord with Iscovesco5 and his co-workers, who investigated the charge of colloids con- 1 Assisted by a grant from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. 2 Field and Teague, Journal of Exper. Med., 1907, viii, 86. * Jour, of Physiol., 1899, xxiv, 288. 4 Hofmeister’s Beit., 1906, vii, 531. BCompt. rend. Soc. biol., 1906, lxi, 195, 355, 378, 470, 568.