Both the parental, cell-walled form and L-form were
detected in the ELISA (Fig. 1), although there was a clear
difference in the extent to which each cell type was recognized.
Figure 1 shows that the limits of detection were
approx. 107 viable cells mlÿ1 for cell-walled and 103 viable
cells mlÿ1 for L-forms. This was equivalent to 12 mg protein
mlÿ1 and 96 ng protein mlÿ1
, respectively.
The speci®city of the antiserum was further investigated
by testing a selection of Bacillus strains and an unidenti®ed
Bacillus isolate cultured from compost samples (Fig. 2).
Laboratory strains of B. brevis, B. cereus and B. licheniformis
were detected at approx. 106 cells mlÿ1 and the compost