CHAPTER XIV 

 SUGAR DESTRUCTION IN THE ECONOMY 



Glycolysis. The author feels that it is desirable to con- 

 clude the series of lectures upon the question of carbohydrate 

 metabolism by a statement of the problem of glycolysis. 

 Although the ground is by no means sure and we know 

 perfectly well that whatever is to be said is far more of a 

 negative than of positive import, the question cannot well be 

 neglected from the list of important problems of physio- 

 logical chemistry how the economy proceeds in the cata- 

 bolism of sugar. 



Efforts to discover the answer of this problem reach 

 rather far back. It is, of course, quite natural that in part 

 these took inception in an example of glycolysis in nature, a 

 process which has achieved a tremendous economical im- 

 portance (not exactly to the best interest of human welfare), 

 that of alcoholic fermentation of sugar by yeast fungi. It is 

 entirely apropos to inquire whether other animal and 

 vegetable cells may not have in some degree a power similar 

 to that of the yeasts to split sugar into alcohol and C0 2 . 



Distribution of Zymases in the Vegetable Kingdom. Al- 

 though Pasteur and Pfeffer had originally suggested that 

 the first phase of the decomposition of sugar in plants con- 

 sists of an anaerobic formation of alcohol which then under- 

 goes combustion into C0 2 and water upon the access of oxy- 

 gen, Stoklasa, of Prague, the biochemist, and his pupils de- 

 serve the credit of first having experimentally furnished 

 support for the idea. After E. Buchner in the latter part of 

 the nineties made the important discovery that an enzyme 

 elaborated by the vital activity of the yeast cells, zymase, is 

 capable of setting up fermentation of sugar into alcohol and 

 carbonic acid, the basis was prepared for the recognition of 

 the zymases of higher types of living beings. By employing 

 the methods used by Buchner for recovering the zymase of 



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