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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 1 37 



Organophosphorous compounds (Hke adenosine triphosphate) are 

 recognized labile storehouses of relatively large amounts of readily- 

 available energy, which is released by the breakdown of such com- 

 pounds during muscle contraction and in other biological processes 

 like bioluminescence and transmission of certain nerve impulses 

 (Rockstein, 1957). The present writer, therefore, undertook to 

 measure changes in activity of total body acid and alkaline sodium 



10 20 30 40 50 60 

 AGE IN DAYS 



Fig. 2. — Alkaline phosphatase in whole body homogenates and brain cell number 

 in the adult worker honey bee. (After Rockstein, 1953.) 



Betaglycerophosphatases in aging adult worker honey bees (Rock- 

 stein, 1953). As shown in figure i, the acid enzyme activity rises 

 rapidly during the early days of imaginal life, so that by the eighth 

 to tenth day the activity is 90 percent higher than that of the newly 

 emerged adult; again this heightened activity remains unchanged 

 throughout the remainder of the bee's life. As shown in figure 2, the 

 alkaline enzyme activity falls precipitously during the same period to 

 a level about 44 percent below that found in the newly emerged imago. 

 Thus, just as the brain cholinesterase activity rises during this early 

 phase of postemergent life, the acid enzyme rises in parallel fashion 

 with a reciprocal diminution in the alkaline enzyme content. (Moog, 

 1946, has stated that the coexistence of these two enzymes in one 



