Abstract
Various organic compounds more or less toxic to the organism have been fed to human beings as well as to many of the lower animals, but little work of this kind has been carried out with the fowl.
Previous investigation has shown that the first action of the animal body is an attempt at complete oxidation of the foreign molecule. Should this fail, an effort is next made to render the compound less toxic by means of reduction with or without subsequent oxidation. If neither of these types of reactions sufficiently alters the foreign substance, recourse is finally had to a synthetic type of reaction by which the original compound is joined in most cases with another compound or radical.
It may be said in general that the effect of oxidation or reduction upon a compound of this kind is to produce either an alcohol or an acid. The acids then are usually detoxicated by being joined with glycocoll, glutamine, ornithine or glycuronic acid, while the alcohols are combined with either the sulphate radical, glycuronic acid or cysteine. Besides this we have methylation of pyridine compounds, acetylation of amino compounds, and the combination of amino compounds to form uramino acids.
For our work we chose compounds which illustrate type reactions only and which in some instances undergo entirely different processes of detoxication in different organisms.
I. Phenylacetic acid was fed to check up some of the older work, and it was found that in the organism of the dog phenylactic acid is combined with glycocoll and appears in the urine as phenaceturic acid. In the human organism, however, it is joined with glutamine and is excreted as phenylacetyl-glutamine, and when fed to chickens it is excreted as phenacetornithuric acid, i.e., in combination with ornithine.
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