Abstract
IN opening a discussion on September 7 in Section B (Chemistry) of the British Association meeting at Leicester, which followed Prof. R. Robinson's address to the Section on “Natural Colouring Matters and their Analogues”, Prof. R. Kuhn first reviewed the inter-relationship of the colouring matters of the carotene group. These substances are synthesised in plants and their molecules each contain forty carbon atoms. They undergo two types of degradation: in the animal body they produce vitamin A by hydrolytic fission, whilst in plants they are oxidised to carotenoids containing fewer carbon atoms. Among the natural oxidation products so formed are the pigments bixin, crocetin and azagrin. The other decomposition products formed in these oxidations frequently possess characteristic colour, smell or taste. Similar oxidations of carotene have recently been carried out in the laboratory.
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Natural Colouring Matters. Nature 132, 574–575 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132574b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132574b0