[Studies of the purification of the exotoxin of Bacillus cereus (author's transl)].

The exotoxins of Bacillus cereus show haemolytic, lethal, Phospholipase-C- and enterotoxigenic activities. The enterotoxigenic activity is regarded to be the factor which causes food poisoning in man. Efforts to purify the B. cereus exotoxins by precipitation with ammonium sulphate and subsequent chromatography on Sephadex-G-75 and Biogel-P-60 columns were partially successfull. Haemolysin and Phospholipase-C could be separated by gel-chromatography, they demonstrated partial identity on gel-diffusion agar. The lethal and enterotoxigenic activities could not be separated from the other toxins and remained heterogenous. No immunological relationship was found between Clostridium Type A alpha toxin and enterotoxin and the exotoxins of B. cereus.