412 FORMATION OF FAT FROM PROTEIN 



tion also takes place in the larval pulp, and there is even said 

 to be a periodicity between increase and loss of fat in the 

 ground-up maggots). We may conclude, then, that there is 

 no proof of the new formation of higher fatty acids from 

 protein in autolysis, that in fact this is highly improbable, 

 and that all of the microscopic observations which apply here 

 may be interpreted very satisfactorily as instances of "fat 

 phanerosis." 



Nature of Fat Phanerosis. Are we actually in position 

 to offer a precise chemical interpretation of the phenomenon 

 of fat phanerosis ? In the first place, are we dealing here 

 with a process of a chemical or of a physical nature? In 

 the writer's opinion it partakes of both. It is essential that 

 we conceive of the fat substances in the cells of the tissue for 

 the most part, not as neutral fat, but as made up of a variety 

 of phosphatids. We are, moreover, undoubtedly fully justi- 

 fied in supposing, as Friedrich v. Miiller suggested years 

 ago, that changes which involve these phosphatids in the 

 course of autolysis are connected with fat phanerosis. Yet 

 even without such an assumption it is possible to fancy that 

 the cells, as the result of autolytic processes, have lost their 

 ability of maintaining fat in a state of solution, 38 as perhaps 

 in connection with cellular swelling, coagulation and acid 

 changes. Then, too, we may think that possibly true chem- 

 ical combinations between fatty acids and proteid bodies 

 ("Upoproteids") exisit, which may undergo cleavage in the 

 autolytic process. 



In this aspect it is of interest to recall that amido-com- 

 binations between high fatty acids and aminoacids (as those 

 synthetically reconstructed in the first place by Bondi 39 and 

 again by Abderhalden, 40 and their co-workers) in contrast to 

 free fatty acids are not soluble in ether, do not take up the 



88 Cf. V. Rubow (Copenhagen), Arch. f. exper. Pathol., 52, 174, 1905. 

 88 S. Bondi, in association with T. Frankl and F. Eissler ( J. Mauthner's 

 Lab., Vienna), Biochem. Zeitschr., 17, 1909, and 23, 1910. 



40 E. Abderhalden and C. Funk, Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chem., 65, 61, 1910. 



