Infection by bact. radicicola in relation to the microchemistry of the host's cell walls

Abstract

The intimate relationship of the nodule bacteria to their hosts, the Leguminosæ, offers some fascinating problems in plant chemistry, which have been only partially solved by the researches of the past 50 years. These investigations have been mainly botanical and bacteriological, and such chemical work as there is has been done from an agricultural standpoint, with a view to discovering and explaining the fertilising action of leguminous crops. Consequently our hypotheses of the more detailed physiological chemistry of the nodule have been deduced largely from cytological and histological evidence. The microchemical mode of attack has been almost entirely neglected. Even though methods in botanical microchemistry are still very unsatisfactory, it seemed possible that a microchemical study of nodule tissues might throw new light on the nodule problem. The results to be reported here are admittedly qualitative and, in some cases, not conclusive, but the author feels that her expectation was justified, and that the field is a fertile one for the future. In general, the methods used were based on those of Molisch (1923) and Tunmann (1913) and on an outline of methods by Dr. Sophia Eckerson (unpublished notes lent by an associate). Additional methods, based on known properties of the substances in question, were devised when necessary.