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Detoxication of Phenylacetic Acid by the Chimpanzee

1936; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 33; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3181/00379727-33-8465p

1535-3702

Francis W. Power,

Mitochondrial Function and Pathology

The chemical defense mechanism of the lower animals, including the monkey, with respect to phenylacetic acid results in a conjugation with glycine; that of man, however, results in the formation of the glutamine conjugate. Some time ago an opportunity was afforded me at the New York Zoological Park of ascertaining what this detoxication mechanism might be in the anthropoid ape. A young chimpanzee (“Buddy”), at that time about 2 1/2 years old and weighing about 10 kilos was placed in a metabolism cage and two 24-hour samples of urine collected. Then four 1.5 gm. portions of phenylacetic acid (mixed with bone meal) were fed to the animal at successive 12-hour intervals and the urine collected 12 hours after each feeding. He received his regular diet of milk, bananas and eggs during the whole experiment. The bulk of the urine was evaporated to dryness, the residue made acid to congo red with H2SO4, mixed with dry sand and extracted exhaustively in a Soxhlet apparatus with absolute ethyl acetate. The crystals which appeared were freed from urea and purified and were found to possess all the properties of phenylacetylglutamine. The melting point was the same, 106°-109°; a 50-50 mixture of the pure substance and the crystals from this experiment melted at 102°-105°; the total nitrogen (Kjeldahl) was 10.05% as against 10.61% calculated; and on alkali hydrolysis 96.4% theoretical ammonia was evolved as compared with a 98.9% recovery from the pure substance run in the same apparatus.