Action of organic anhydrides on mycobacteria.

Fite, George L. (U. S. Public Health Service Hospital, Carville, La.), Carolyn K. Wrinkle, and Donald J. Lartigue. Action of organic anhydrides on mycobacteria. J. Bacteriol. 83:1305-1305. 1962.-The bacilli of leprosy, murine leprosy, and tuberculosis lose acid-fastness when treated with maleic anhydride, without loss of morphological integrity. Mycobacterium lepraemurium characteristically reacts only with maleic and not other anhydrides. Although the acid-fastness of M. tuberculosis, strain H(37)R(v), is altered by hot water and many hot organic solvents, it is destroyed by maleic anhydride with greater rapidity than that of M. lepraemurium. M. leprae lies intermediate to the other two in its reactivity. The reaction is probably a diene-anhydride synthesis, which in the case of M. lepraemurium may be of the Diels-Alder type.