592 PANTOTHENIC ACID 



than one such thermostable factor which further study may succeed in 

 differentiating. Moreover, it is not clear that all essential factors, or neces- 

 sary relations among such factors, for the nutrition of the albino rat, have 

 as yet been determined." The confusion was largely attributable to three 

 causes : 



1. Different species of animals such as the chicken, the turkey, the rat, 

 and the human being showed superficially similar symptoms, such as 

 dermatitis, which were very frequently and uncritically referred to as 

 "pellagra." This resulted in the mistaken implication that one vitamin 

 only was involved when in fact each so-called "pellagrous" condition was 

 due to the deficiency of a different vitamin. 



2. Not all species reacted similarly to all vitamin deficiencies. Man, 

 dog, and pig were sensitive to the deficiency of nicotinic acid, but the rat 

 and the chick were not.^ It took some time for investigators to realize that 

 a pig developed pellagra on a diet whereas a rat on the same diet did not. 



3. Adsorbing agents such as fuller's earth and charcoal which were used 

 in the fractionation of different vitamins were not so specific as the in- 

 vestigators using them believed, leading to considerable misunderstanding. 



Slowly and laboriously the weight of accumulating evidence brought to 

 light the chemical nature of pantothenic acid. Two completely independent 

 lines of investigations, proceeding simultaneously, one with microorgan- 

 isms and the other with chicks, finally merged, and together they were 

 largely responsible for the isolation of pantothenic acid and its recognition 

 as a vitamin. 



The pioneering investigations of Williams, an organic chemist using 

 microorganisms and microbiological methods, were in large part responsible 

 for the isolation and characterization of pantothenic acid. The term was 

 coined by Williams and his coworkers and it comes from the Greek mean- 

 ing "from everywhere^' ^^ because it was found in all of a considerable num- 

 ber of plant and animal tissues from widely divergent sources, and they 

 correctly felt that it must play a fundamentally important biological role. 

 The retention of the name pantothenic acid and the failure to use any 

 letter-number designation for it marks the early departure from the tra- 

 ditional alphabetical-number vitamin nomenclature. Williams et al. ' " used 

 the following techniques in the isolation of pantothenic acid from liver. 



2 S. Lepkovsky, Nutrition Abstr. cfe Revs. 11, 363 (1942). This article carries an ex- 

 tensive bibliography on the subject. 



3 R. J. Williams, C. M. Lyman, G. H. Goodj^ear, J. H. Truesdail, and D. Holaday, 

 J. Am. Chem. Soc. 55, 2912 (1933). 



3" R. J. Williams, Advances in Enzymol. 3, 253 (1943). This article carries an ex- 

 tensive bibliography on the subject. 



* R. J. Williams, J. H. Truesdail, H. H. Weinstock, Jr., E. Rohrmann, C. M. Lyman, 

 and C. H. McBurney, /. Am. Chem. Soc. 60, 2719 (1938). 



^^ F. A. Robinson, The Vitamin B Complex. John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1951. 



