The cytological response to the ingestion of tubercle bacilli by cultured mouse peritoneal macrophages has been studied by electron microscopy. Methods included a quantitative assessment based on systematic surveying of cell profiles, and of phagosomes and their contained bacteria, encountered in thin sections; classification of the sectioned bacteria into visibly damaged and apparently intact categories; prelabeling of dense granules (secondary lysosomes) with ferritin as an aid to identifying the occurrence and frequency of phagosome-lysosome fusion; and monitoring of bacterial growth and viability by light microscopy and cultural counts. The situations studied were as follows: progressive infection with the multiplying virulent strain H37Rv; ingestion of the same strain previously inactivated by gamma radiation; infection with an attenuated strain (BCG); and a stabilized virulent infection induced by the surfactant Macrocyclon.

In the bacterial suspensions used routinely for inoculation, about half the bacilli were viable, matching closely the proportions of intact and damaged organisms identified with the electron microscope. In the inoculated macrophages, some phagosomes containing intact bacilli and others containing damaged bacilli were always to be found; but the proportion of organisms scored as damaged increased, and that of intact organisms decreased, in situations where the population as a whole had been rendered nonviable before inoculation, or where they became so intracellularly as in the late stages of a BCG infection.

Evidence of fusion of ferritin-marked lysosomes with some bacterium-containing phagosomes was obtained in all experiments, but a significant difference was regularly observed according to whether the bacilli were damaged or intact. Virtually all phagosomes containing damaged bacilli showed signs of fusion; but when many phagosomes were present containing apparently intact organisms (as with actively multiplying strain H37Rv or with this strain held at a steady level of viability by Macrocyclon, and also with strain BCG at an early stage of that infection), signs of fusion of lysosomes with these phagosomes were infrequent.

From these findings it is inferred that intracellular survival of M. tuberculosis in cultured macrophages is associated with a tendency to nonfusion of dense granules with the phagosome, thus avoiding direct exposure of the bacilli to the contents of these organelles. It is suggested, further, that fusion of dense granules with the phagosome, leading to digestion, is determined by recognition of the bacillus as nonviable. The possibility is discussed that the cytological response to different mycobacterial infections may reflect differences of a basic nature between facultative and obligate intracellular parasitism.