Essential role of histidine peptides in tetanus toxin production.

A number of papers from this laboratory have traced the development of a medium for the production of highly potent tetanus toxin, the basis of which is a pancreatic digest of casein (l-3). Considerable work has been done in an effort to identify those components of the digest essential for toxin production, and it has been shown that at least some of these materials are peptides (4, 5). In the present communication, experiments are reported which resulted in the identification of one such group of peptides.