DISINTEGRATION OF FAT 391 



complished. 27 Finally it is undoubtedly rational to suppose 

 that the aldol by taking up one atom of oxygen may change 



CH, CH, 



CH.OH + O = CH.OH 



into -oxybutyric acid : f [ This, however, 



COH COOH 



undoubtedly plays an important role in the physiological 

 chemistry of the fatty acids, to which further reference will 

 be made in a succeeding lecture. However, it may well be 

 that the route from sugar to fat may be quite different, and 

 may not lead through lactic acid and aldehyde. Even to- 

 day it is still impossible to speak at all positively in this 

 connection. 



In precisely the same way as the upbuilding of the long 

 carbon chain of the fatty acid molecule is shrouded in dark- 

 ness, so, too, is its catabolism unknown. As no opportunity 

 seems open in the study of animal metabolism to solve this 

 mystery the writer has endeavored by two experiments in 

 the field of plant physiology to force an access. 



Experiments upon the Disintegration of Fat by Plants. 

 In the first place the writer, at the suggestion of his teacher, 

 Franz Hofmeister, took up the behavior of the fat of oil- 

 bearing seeds at time of sprouting (v. supra, p. 387) in order, 

 if possible, to obtain from the study of their fat catabolism 

 some basic information applicable to the chemistry of the 

 conversion of fat in the animal body. In spite of all the 

 care with which large numbers of sun-flower and castor-bean 

 seedlings were reared in the basement of the Strassburg 

 Institute, it was impossible to find in them any trace of 

 intermediate products between fat and sugar, or to de- 

 termine in a single instance the new formation of unsatur- 

 ated acids or oxy-acids of the fatty acid series. 28 



"Raper, Jour. Chem. Soc., 91, 1831, 1907; Proc. Chem. Soc., 28, 235, 1907, 

 cited in Chem. Centralbl., 1908', 223. 



28 O. v. Fiirth (F. Hofmeister's Lab.), Hofmeister's Beitr., 4, 430, 1903. 



