62 
THE FORMATION OF PROTEIDS IN PLANT-CELLS. 
a transitory product, found when the conditions of finishing the 
process of protein-synthesis are not complete. To these con¬ 
clusions we are led by the circumstances under which asparagin 
appears in shoots, and disappears again. 
When sugar participates in the formation of proteids from 
asparagin , it evidently yields the carbon to make up the deficiency; 
this function, however, would not be required if aspartic acid 
were used ; the proportion of the number of atoms of 
N : C is in albumen i : 4 
in aspartic acid 1 : 4 
in asparagin 1 : 2 
(in tyrosin 1: 9, in leucin 1:6). 
Several considerations (see Chapt. VIII) make it highly 
probable, that the formation of protein compounds consists in a 
rapidly proceeding condensation process, in a certain degree 
analogous to the formation of sugars from formic aldehyde. T) 
To render, however, such a process possible, asparagin would 
best be converted into the di-aldehyde of aspartic acid, a reduc¬ 
ing process whereby glucose very probably would have to furnish 
the necessary hydrogen : 
CONH, 
CH, 
1 +4H 
CH.NH, 
i 
COOH 
_ . I 
Asparagin. 
The conditions in the living cells would not permit for a 
moment these products of reductions in a free state, and in 
presence of glucose the ammonia set free would be transformed 
at once into organic combinations, most probably into another 
molecule of aspartic aldehyde ; thus asparagin and glucose 
would yield directly 2 mol. of this aldehyde, which may be 
expressed by the following equation : 
COH 
I 
ch 2 
+NH3+H.0. 
CH.NH, . 
I 
COH 
Aspartic aldehyde. 
1) I have been the first to show that formic aldehyde will by condensation yield 
true sugars, and the first to prove beyond a doubt, that such a synthetical sugar is 
capable of alcoholic fermentation. No sophistry can disprove these facts. 
Compare Journ. f. prakt. Chem. 33, 332; Ber. d. Deutsch. Chem. Ges. 20, 142 and 
3042; Ibid. 22, 477 and 481 ; Lar.dw. Versuchstat. 41, 132. 
