Morphological studies in the life-histories of bacteria

Abstract
It has of course long been recognised that changes in the cultural environment of bacteria may sometimes be followed by corresponding morphological adaptations. By many students such changes in form have been summarily dismissed on the facile theory that cultural contamination has occurred. The rigid precautions taken in these experiments to exclude such accident, and the fact that gemmation took place under observation on the warm stage, dispose of the contamination theory. By other students aberrant morphological types of bacteria are frequently put aside on account of their supposed involutionary nature. The term “involution form” may perhaps be legitimately applied to the bizarre deformities seen in dying or dead individuals in old, or otherwise unsuitable, media. But to apply the term to young, freely growing, freely dividing organisms under the optimum cultural conditions employed throughout in these experiments would be hardly reasonable.

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