S. A. Singal, S. Hazan, V. P. Sydenstricker
Feb 1, 1953
Citations
0
Influential Citations
6
Citations
Journal
The Journal of biological chemistry
Abstract
With the discovery of threonine through its essentiality in the growth of the rat, it became possible to raise animals on synthetic diets completely devoid of protein (l-3). However, the metabolic fate of this amino acid is still largely unknown today. Its importance in the growth of microorganisms (4) and in the maintenance of nitrogen equilibrium in older animals (5-7) has been demonstrated. nn-Threonine and the stereoisomer nr,-allothreonine are glycogen formers and can decrease the ketonuria resulting from butyric acid (8). The synthesis of glycine from these amino acids has been reported (9). Threonine prevents the nephrotoxic effect of nn-serine (10) in rats and antagonizes the same amino acid in lactic acid bacteria (11). In a recent report from this laboratory it was shown that fatty livers could be produced in rats on low casein or amino acid rations containing a suboptimal amount of threonine (12). It seemed of importance, therefore, to assay the lipotropic action of some compounds related to threonine in order to determine the existence of any relationship between structural specificity and the prevention of fatty livers. The data obtained with D-, L-, and nn-threonine, nn-allothreonine, and DL-homoserine are presented here.