Effects of laboratory maintenance on the nature of surface reactive antigens of Neisseria gonorrhoeae.

The extensive in vitro cultivation methods used in propagating and maintaining gonococcal cells were found to affect their virulence, antigenicity, and ultrastructure. Adapting a laboratory-maintained strain of gonococci to animal virulence resulted in two lines of pilated cells with similar colonial morphologies. The animal-adapted cells, however, had a greater amount of extracellular pili and a more prominent peptidoglycan cell wall layer. They were also more resistant to the bactericidal effects of guinea-pig complement and more reactive in macroagglutination and bactericidal tests with strain-specific gonococcal antibody. In comparative guinea-pig protection trials, formalin-fixed cells of the animal-adapted cell line were 500 times more effective as immunogens than the laboratory-maintained cell line.