Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2009
1. The respiration of bacteria normally present in thin slices of skin taken from pig's trotters has been measured in Cruickshank micro-respirometers.
2. These respirometers were originally designed to measure skin respiration in a medium including antibiotic to inhibit bacterial activity. The skin and medium was contained in a glass well. Using pig skin in a similar system without antibiotic, bacteria left the skin to grow independently in the medium. To overcome this difficulty polythene cups were made with an inner compartment for the tissue without medium and an outer compartment for water which provided a humid atmosphere.
3. Using polythene cups without medium the skin respiration was neglible, bacterial respiration was measured in situ and correlation between oxygen uptake and bacterial counts was obtained. This correlation was valid within experiments only.
4. Respiration of skin samples taken from adjacent areas of pig's trotter was similar, but there was large variation between samples from different trotters.
5. Respiration due to bacteria increased rapidly for 6–9 hr., followed by a slower increase. This may be due to a limited food supply or to a state of equilibrium.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.