New Amino-Acids in Bacterial Hydrolysates

Abstract

As part of the programme in this Laboratory of studying the relation between a bacteriophage and its host organism, analyses have been made of the amino-acid contents of hydrochloric acid and barium hydroxide digests of E. coli. The methods used for this have been the partition chromatography of Consdon, Gordon and Martin¹ as modified² to yield quantitative results. The following known amino-acids have been identified in these hydrolysates : aspartic and glut-amic acids, serine, glycine, alanine, threonine, valine, isoleucine, leucine, methionine, tryptophane, phenylalanine, tyrosine, proline, arginine, lysine and histidine. In addition, three weak spots, indicated by the letters a, b, c in Fig. 1, have been noticed which do not correspond to known naturally occurring amino-acids. Spots b and c have only been visible when concentrated hydrolysates containing c. 40 mgm. N/c.c. have been applied to the paper.