On Digestive Proteolysis: Being the Cartwright Lectures for 1894Chittenden, R. H. (Russell Henry)
Science
On Digestive Proteolysis: Being the Cartwright Lectures for 1894
Chittenden, R. H. (Russell Henry)
Digestion; Digestive enzymes; Enzymes
In view of the apparent complexity of the processes attending
trypsin-proteolysis, it is not strange that even simpler substances
than those already described should make their appearance. Thus, when
it was suggested that ammonia, NH_{3}, might be formed under the
influence of trypsin, it was not considered at all improbable, for in
the hydrolytic decomposition of proteids by boiling dilute acid, as
well as by baryta water, it had long been known as a prominent product.
Obviously, in trypsin-proteolysis, the one thing to be guarded against
in proving the formation of ammonia is the contaminating influence
of bacteria. Hirschler,[191] however, with a full recognition of this
danger, made digestions of blood-fibrin with trypsin extending only
through four hours and at a temperature of 32° C., and yet he obtained
plain evidence of the formation of ammonia. Stadelmann,[192] with
still greater precautions to exclude all bacterial agencies, using
boiled fibrin as the material to be digested and thymol to prevent
any possible infection of the digestive mixture, proved conclusively
that ammonia was formed as a result of trypsin-proteolysis. Thus, in
the digestion of 35 grammes of boiled blood-fibrin with 60 c. c. of
a pancreas infusion for three days, 20.8 milligrammes of NH_{3} were
developed, presumably coming from the liberation of a certain amount
of nitrogen attendant upon the formation of such bodies as leucin and
tyrosin, which contain considerably less nitrogen than their direct
antecedent hemipeptone, or the original proteid. We thus have striking
proof of the ability of this peculiar proteolytic enzyme to set in
motion hydrolytic changes which may extend even to the production of
such simple substances as ammonia, thus making still more striking
the parallelism between trypsin-proteolysis on the one hand, and the
artificial hydrolysis produced by boiling dilute acids on the other.
[191] Bildung von Ammoniak bei der Pancreasverdauung von Fibrin.
Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chem., Band 10, p. 302.
[192] Bildung von Ammoniak bei Pancreasverdauung von Fibrin. Zeitschr.
f. Biol., Band 24, p. 261.
In view of all these facts regarding the nature of the products
obtainable by pancreatic proteolysis, it is very evident that many
chemical changes may take place side by side in a vigorous pancreatic
digestion of proteid matter. We know without a shadow of doubt that all
of the bodies enumerated as products of pancreatic digestion are the
results of trypsin-proteolysis, and not the products of putrefactive
changes. Bacteria, it is true, are able to produce many like products,
and in the living intestinal tract exercise an important influence,
especially in the breaking down of resistant forms of proteid matter,
and in the decomposition of surplus material which has escaped the
pancreatic ferment. But all the bodies described above are readily
obtainable by trypsin-proteolysis under conditions which exclude all
possibility of bacterial action.
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