LIMITING FACTORS IN GLYCOLYSIS OF 



ASCITES TUMOUR CELLS AND THE 



PASTEUR EFFECT* 



E. Racker and R. Wu 



Division of Nutrition and Physiology, The Public Health Research 

 Institute of the City of New York, Inc. 



Before we can investigate regulatory mechanisms of 

 metabolic pathways and explore how they are influenced by 

 hormones, drugs or poisons, we should have a detailed 

 knowledge of the metabolic process itself. Let us start by 

 expressing doubts as to whether we have the basic knowledge 

 of intracellular metabolism needed for such studies. On the 

 other hand, we must admit that considerable information 

 regarding regulatory mechanisms has already been obtained, 

 as is apparent from the discussions during this symposium. 

 Perhaps we are somewhat in the position of the talented 

 student of the Talmud, who was known for his brilliant, 

 answers. One day he went to his equally talented friend, who 

 was known for his brilliant questions, and requested : "Please 

 ask me a good question, I have a wonderful answer." 



During the past three years some efforts have been made in 

 our laboratory at reconstructing life, as Dr. P. P. Cohen 

 jokingly calls it. We have taken individual, highly purified 

 enzymes of glycolysis and have put them together with 

 mitochondria in order to study their interaction. We share 

 Dr. Cohen's scepticism regarding the resemblance of these 

 reconstructed systems to intracellular metabolism. Since we 

 have recently reviewed some of these efforts of our reconstruc- 

 tion period (Racker and Gatt, 1959), we need not discuss them 



* This work was supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes 

 of Health, U.S. Pubhc Health Service, Bethesda, Maryland. 



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