Twitching motility and possession of polar fimbriae in spreading Streptococcus sanguis isolates from the human throat

Abstract

A collection of 19 strains of alpha haemolytic streptococci, isolated from throat swabs and characterized by production of spreading zones around colonies on blood agar, was found to constitute a very homogeneous group with morphological, physiological and biochemical characters corresponding to those of streptococci of ser-group H, or Streptococcus sanguis, and they all appeared to possess the group H antigen. They all had a common agglutinogen and, in addition, heterogeneous agglutinogens. The spreading growth, which appears to be a common property of S. sanguis, was due to twitching motility, and the spreading cultures possessed polar fimbriae. tneither twitching motility nor the possession of polar fimbriae have been observed in gram-positive bacteria before.