CHEMICAL PHENOMENA IN LIFE 



years does not contain more than a few reports 

 about analytical work on protoplasm. The great 

 difficulty in such investigations is to procure a 

 sufficient quantity of suitable material. 



Nevertheless, we possess valuable papers on 

 the chemistry of protoplasm from special research 

 work done on animal and plant material. There 

 are results which clearly show the difficulties 

 met with in preparing the protoplasm-proteins 

 without any chemical change during the process of 

 separating them. There is no doubt that proto- 

 plasm contains highly complex proteins which 

 are very easily split up into more primitive protein 

 substances, even by treating them with very 

 dilute alkaline or acid solution, or even by keeping 

 them in a watery solution for a couple of hours 

 at ordinary laboratory temperature. Reinke's 

 opinion was that one of the protein bodies of his 

 preparation, the so-called Plastine, was the chief 

 constituent of protoplasm. Later, Etard was 

 fortunate enough to isolate complex protoplasm- 

 proteids of highly variable character. The 

 French chemist proposed to name these com- 

 pounds Protoplasmids. By more advanced methods 

 of quickly drying the cell protoplasm without 

 applying too high a temperature, zoochemists 

 succeeded in preparing a series of such Organ- 

 Proteids. We cannot but hope that the bio- 

 chemistry of protoplasm will in this way make con- 

 siderable progress. The successful investigations 

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