Washed cells of Salmonella enteritidis harvested from a defined medium during logarithmic growth were subjected to starvation in pH 7 phosphate buffer at 37 C. Viability was measured by slide cultures and plate counts. The survival of cell suspensions equivalent to 1 to 10 mg (dry wt)/ml was influenced by cryptic growth. The rate of cryptic growth, assessed by plate counts, increased with cell density and could not be alleviated by starvation with dialysis. Dialysis of the starving culture did retard the onset of cryptic growth but did not eliminate it, indicating that the major substrates for regrowth were relatively large cellular components. In phosphate buffer, 6.7 homologous heat-killed cells allowed for the doubling of one S. enteritidis cell. Cryptic growth was not observed when cells were starved on the surface of membrane filters or in suspensions equivalent to 20 mug (dry wt)/ml (105 cells/ml). Similar half-life survival times were calculated for both these populations, but the shape of their survival curves differed significantly. These differences were attributed to stress factors encountered during cell preparation and during starvation. The half-life survival time of S. enteritidis starved at 20 mug (dry wt)/ml was 140 h in phosphate buffer, 82 h in 3,6-endomethylene-1,2,3,-6-tetrahydrophthalic acid buffer, and 77 h in tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane buffer.

Buffers↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Evidence against acetone-soluble renin inhibitors in normal human plasma.

The presence of acetone-soluble renin inhibitors in normal plasma has been proposed to explain the variation of plasma reactivity (PRR) in samples from normotensive and hypertensive subjects. In our experience, acetone extraction decreased PRR in relation to unextracted control values, an observation which is not consistent with the circulating lipid-renin inhibitor hypothesis. Exposure to acetone at -40 degrees C for 1 minute invariably denatured some endogenous angiotensinogen. The PRR in extracted and unextracted plasma was positively correlated with the concentration of available angiotensinogen, r = 0.955 (p < 0.05), and r = 0.964 (p < 0.01), respectively, but the addition of exogenous substrate did not uniformly increase PRR in acetone-treated plasma above control values. These data argue against the use of acetone extraction to demonstrate the existence of circulating lipid-renin inhibitors. Acetone removed 14% to 25% of the normal plasma lipids and although the extract contained most of the major lipid classes, neutral lipids were the most abundant (73% by weight). The presence of acetone-soluble phospholipids appeared to increase angiotensin I formation in the partially purified renin-angiotensinogen system, but phospholipids interfered with the radioimmunoassay and resulted in an overestimation of angiotensin I. Plasma neutral lipids decreased in vitro renin activity by 13% (p < 0.025) but this degree of inhibition suggests that lipid-renin interactions may have minimal in vivo physiological significance. In contrast to previous reports, we found the correlation between PRR and endogenous angiotensinogen in normotensive and hypertensive plasmas to be statistically significant (r = 0.643, p < 0.01). Inactivated human angiotensinogen was also shown to be an inhibitor of renin in vitro. This effect could have possibly influenced PRR values that were determined by others in the presence of inactivated angiotensinogen.

Acetone↗