Over the early 1920s, several researchers in Avery's laboratory at Rockefeller Hospital turned their attention to certain bacteria, such as Bacillus influenzae, which had previously only been grown in media containing blood or blood derivatives. Because of this, the bacteria were termed "hemophilic." In this third article resulting from a long series of studies on bacterial nutrition that Avery conducted with Thjotta and Hugh Morgan, the scientists found that growth accessory substances which occur in human blood were also present in plant and animal tissue. They argued that the observation of the growth of "so-called" hemophilic bacteria on blood free media demonstrated that other substances could function in the same manner as the growth-inducing factors in blood.
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