Showing papers in "Annual Review of Biochemistry in 1940"

The Metabolism of Proteins and Amino Acids

Abstract: This year is an appropriate one for reviewing the evidence which invalidated the classical theory of protein metabolism (in animals) epitomized in the terms "endogenous" and "exogenous" metabolism; the evidence which has established the theory proposed by Borsook & Keighley (1) and confirmed and extended by Schoenheimer and his colleagues (2) and by Tarver & Schmidt (3) will also be reviewed in this context.

The Biochemistry of Viruses

Abstract: Viruses were discovered in 1892 but their biochemistry is a rela­ tively new subject. It was not until 1935 that a tangible, characteristic material carrying virus activity became available for biochemical study and the nature of viruses was indicated fairly clearly. Previously, viruses had been recognized only by means of their biological activity and although there had been much work on the effect of different treatments on viruses, opinions concerning their nature were extremely varied. It should be mentioned that vaccine virus was purified and isolated as early as 1922, but since the elementary bodies o£ viruses of this type are similar in appearance and size to accepted organisms, their purification had but little influence on the trend of biochemical investigations of viruses in general. A stimulus was provided by the chemical isolation of a high molecular weight crystalline protein mate­ rial possessing the properties of tobacco mosaic virus ( 154). A wide­ spread search for similar materials in both animal and plant tissues diseased with different viruses followed and has resulted in the dis­ covery during the past four years of over twenty different materials of high molecular weight possessing some of the properties of the respective viruses or virus strains.. The volume of this work is in­ creasing at a very rapid rate, yet to date the investigations on most of these materials have been of a somewhat fragmentary nature. How­ ever, tobacco mosaic virus has been the subject of an extremely varied and most extensive series of researches . In addition, the purified preparations of certain strains of tobacco mosaic and the related cu­ cumber mosaic -3 and -4 viruses, of latent mosaic of potato, Shope rabbit papilloma, bushy stunt and tobacco ring spot viruses, and of a staphylococcus bacteriophage have been subjected to considerable in­ vestigation . Some of this work has been described in previous vol­ umes of this Review. The isolation of tobacco mosaic virus was men­ tioned in the Review for 1935 ( 124) and the immunological results obtained with purified active and inactivated virus and the first sedi­ mentation analyses were described in the Review for 193 6 (1, 72). The following year, Bergmann & Niemann (15) reviewed three im­ portant advances, the isolation of the same characteristic protein of

The Chemistry of the Sterols

Abstract: During the three years which have elapsed since the chemistry of the steroids was last reviewed (1), so many important advances have been made in this field that it has been found necessary in these re­ views to subdivide the subject into several sections. For this reason, and also through a limitation of space, we have confined our survey solely to the chemistry of the sterols, since a full appreciation of their reactions is a necessary prelude to a thorough understanding of sex­ and cortical-hormone chemistry. Previous reviews in this series to­ gether with the monographs of Lettre & Inhoffen (2), Fieser (3) and Sobotka (4) provide an excellent background to the subject as a whole, while the articles by Strain (5) and Callow (6) describe the more recent advances. A more specialised treatment of the sterol field has recently been written by one of the authors in collaboration with Dr. F. S. Spring (7), and our aim in the present review has been to bring this up to date. The literature cited covers the period up to December, 1939, except that since the outbreak of hostilities, the Ger­ man journals have not been available in this country. Stereochemistry of the sterols.-This complex subject has not undergone any radical changes in the period under review and no solution of the difficult problem of the nomenclature of stereoisom­ erides which meets with universal approval has as yet been pro­ posed. In order to obviate the changes necessitated by the proposal (8) to refer the orientation of the Ca-hydroxyl group to that of the Cw-methyl group, Miescher & Fischer (9) now suggest making ref­ erence to the carbon atom in position 9, thus retaining the original "cis" and "trans" designations of Ruzicka, while eliminating the dif­ ficulty which arises when C5 is attached to an ethenoid linkage.!