Abstract
THE researches of V. Meyer and E. Schulze on the action of hydroxylamine salts upon plants (Berl. Ber., xvii. 1554) were undertaken with the a priori probability of showing that this base plays an important part in the synthetical activity of the plant; and although they have not succeeded in establishing the experimental fact, the results obtained are of great interest, and the whole is eminently suggestive of future possibilities. The supply of nitrogen to plants takes the form of nitrates and ammoniacal salts, and these classes of compounds being destitute of synthetical activity, we are driven to assume that the earlier stages of nitrogen assimilation consist in the conversion of these comparatively inert substances into derivatives having the “chemical tension” necessary to synthetic activity. Hydroxylamine and its salts, which occupy in point of oxidation a position intermediate between ammonia and the nitrates, arc bodies possessing this character in the highest degree. To use the author's words, “the behaviour of this base towards the organic oxy-compounds is most aggressive: it is indeed astonishing with what facility it converts carbonyl-compounds into azotised derivatives.” This is notably the case with the ketones and aldehydes of the fatty series, the products of the union being oximido-derivatives, e.g. aldoxime, acetoxime, isonitroso acids; in these the characteristic C=NO2 group easily undergoes reduction, with formation of the corresponding amido derivatives; and upon the hypothesis of the formation of hydroxylamine in the plant as the first stage in nitrogen assimilation, it is easy to see in what manner its non-nitrogenous constituents, which for the most part possess the characteristics of aldehydes and ketones, would contribute to the further stages in its elaboration.
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Hydroxylamine and the Assimilation of Nitrogen by Plants . Nature 30, 548 (1884). https://doi.org/10.1038/030548a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/030548a0