Abstract
ALTHOUGH its presence in proteins has been reported several times1-6, α-amino-n-butyric acid has not been generally accepted as a naturally occurring amino-acid, probably because no readily reproducible method for its isolation has yet been described. However, the isolation of its hydroxy homologue threonine7 suggests that α-amino-n-butyric acid may occur widely, since whenever a known hydroxy amino-acid occurs in any given protein, the corresponding simple amino-acid is usually present in even larger amounts. Accordingly, it seems probable that an appropriate fractionation of the alanine and valine fractions of a protein rich in threonine would yield appreciable amounts of α-amino-n-butyric acid. Hydrolysis should preferably be enzymatic, since prolonged heating with mineral acids has been found to liberate some nitrogen from the synthetic dl-α-amino-n-butyric acid8, while l-glutamic acid heated with alkalis decomposes to acrylic acid and α-amino-n-butyric acid9, so that misleading results would be obtained by alkaline hydrolysis of proteins. Preliminary work along these lines has been interrupted by the War.
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TOBIE, W. A Neglected Constituent of Proteins, α-Amino-n-butyric Acid. Nature 152, 249 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/152249a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/152249a0
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