Biochemical and immunochemical analysis of Rickettsia rickettsii strains of various degrees of virulence.

Six strains of Rickettsia rickettsii from Montana and North Carolina were examined in an effort to identify rickettsial constituents associated with virulence. Fever responses, scrotal reactions, and mortalities of male guinea pigs inoculated intraperitoneally with 1,000 PFU of rickettsial strains revealed that the two Montana patient strains ( Sheila Smith and Norgaard ) and one Montana strain ( Sawtooth female 2) from the wood tick, Dermacentor andersoni, could be placed in the group of highest virulence, the two North Carolina strains (Morgan and Simpson) in the group of lesser virulence, and the Montana strain (HLP) from the rabbit tick, Haemaphysalis leporispalustris , in the group of lowest virulence. The HLP strain was differentiated from the other strains by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis followed by staining with Coomassie brilliant blue or with silver. The patient strains could not be differentiated from each other by these procedures. All of the strains apparently had three heat-modifiable proteins. Analysis of proteinase K-digested rickettsial lysates by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis suggested that the strains had a complex mixture of polysaccharides. These putative polysaccharides probably were not related to the differences in virulence of the strains, since the patterns for all of the strains were identical. At least five antigens (molecular weights of 128,000, 105,000, 84,000, 30,500, and 20,500) were demonstrated by radioimmune precipitation tests employing extracts from radioiodine-labeled rickettsiae and antibodies from infected guinea pigs. With these same sera a minimum of 14 antigens was detected in these strains by an immunoblotting procedure. The apparent molecular weights of several of the HLP antigens differed from those of the presumed corresponding antigens of the other strains. The electrophoretic techniques utilized in this study were not sufficiently sensitive to demonstrate compositional differences in the patient strains which differed in their virulence for guinea pigs.