392 FAT METABOLISM. OBESITY 



There was not much more success when later with his 

 friend, Carl Schwarz, the writer undertook to study the 

 disintegration of fat by low forms of plant life (mould- 

 fungi, bacillus fluorescens liquefaciens, proteus). 29 The 

 microorganisms were watched in their growth and develop- 

 ment upon inorganic media containing as their sole organic 

 substance high fatty acids, and in their abstraction of their 

 carbon requirements from these fatty acids ; but the investi- 

 gators never succeeded in obtaining any catabolic product. 

 The only point that was learned was that this type of fat 

 catabolism cannot be regarded, as is occasionally done, as 

 parallel to any of the known fermentation processes. To all 

 appearances it is rather an intracellular oxidation process. 



Catabolism of the Fatty Acids in the Animal Body. The 

 most available points of attack for the type of catabolism of 

 the higher fatty acids which occurs in the economy are pre- 

 sented from the studies of F. Knoop 30 on the one hand, and 

 by those of Gr. Embden 31 and his associates on the other, 

 somewhat as follows : The catabolism of the saturated ali- 

 phatic fatty acids takes place by oxidation at the ^-carbon 

 atom with cleavage of the two carbon atoms from the car- 

 boxyl end : 



. .CHz CHz-CH, CHr- CH 2 -COOH 



CH2-CH2 CH 2 CH(OH)-CH 2 -COOH 



CHr- CH2-CH2-COOH 



. .CH 2 CH(OH) CH a COOH 



..CH, COOH. 



Embden held that, in case the process actually takes place in 

 the manner depicted, it would be necessary to expect that 

 eventually from the higher fatty acids, after the long carbon 

 atom chain is again and again shortened by throwing off two 



38 O. v. Fiirth and C. Schwarz (Festschr. f. Giulio Fano), Archivio di Fisiol., 

 7, 441, 1909. 



30 F. Knoop, Hofmeister's Beitr., 6, 150, 1905. 



81 G. Embden, H. Salomon and Fr. Schmidt, H'ofmeister's Beitr., 8, 129, 

 1906; G. Embden and A. Marx, Hofmeister's Beitr., 9, 318, 1908. 



