§ 1 The Characteristic Substances of the Protoplasm. The Nucleo-Proteids
The Different Categories of Albuminoid Substances.—Albuminoid or proteid substances are extremely complex compounds, much more so than any of those which are being constantly studied by the chemist. They also are to be found in great variety. It has been difficult to separate them one from the other, to characterize them rigorously, or, in other words, to classify them. However, it has been done now, and we distinguish three classes which are differentiated at once from the physiological and from the chemical points of view. The first comprises the complete or typical albuminoids. They are the proteids or nucleo-albuminoids. They are to be found in the most active and most living parts of the protoplasm, and therefore in the spongioplasm of the cell and around the nucleus. The second group is formed of albumins and globulins, compounds already simpler, fragments derived from the destruction of the preceding, into which they enter as constituent elements. In the isolated state they do not belong to the really living protoplasm; they exist in the cellular juice, in the interstitial and circulating liquids in the blood and in the lymph. The third category comprises real but incomplete albuminoids. They are to be found in the portions of the economy which have a specialized or attenuated life, and are destined to serve as a support to the more active elements—i.e., they contribute to the building up of the bony, cartilaginous, conjunctive, elastic tissues. They are called albumoids. It is naturally the first group, that of the proteids—i.e., of the complete and characteristic compounds of the living substance—upon which the attention of the physiologists must be fixed. It is only quite recently that the clear definition of these substances has been given, and proteid compounds detected in the confused mass.
The Nucleo-proteids.—This progress in the characterization and specification of the proteids required in the first place a knowledge of two particular compounds, the nucleins and the histones. This did not become possible until after the researches of Miescher and Kossel on the nucleins, which went on from 1874 to 1892, and those of Lilienfeld and d’Yvor Bang on the histones, from 1893 to 1899. The complete albuminoids are constituted by the combination of two kinds of substances—albumins or histones on the one hand, and nucleins on the other. By combining solutions of albumins or histones with solutions of nuclein, the synthesis of the proteid is effected. The study of the properties and characteristics of these nucleo-albumins and nucleo-histones is going on at the present moment. It is being carried out with much method and with wonderful patience by the German school.
All the proteids contain phosphorus in addition to the five chemical elements, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulphur, which are common to the other albuminoids. Another interesting feature in their history is that the action of the gastric juice divides them into their two constituents:—the nuclein, which is deposited and resists the destructive action of the digestive liquid, and the albumin or histone, which on the contrary experiences this action with the usual consequences. Thus the gastric juice furnishes a process which is very simple and very convenient in the analysis of the proteids.
Localization of the Nucleo-Proteids.—What we said before as to the important physiological rôle of the cellular nucleus may arouse the expectation that in it will be found the living matter which is chemically the most differentiated, the albuminoids of highest rank—i.e., the nucleo-proteids and their constituents. Not that they would not be found in the protoplasm of the rest of the cell, but there is certainly a risk that they would be less concentrated there and more blended with accessory products; they are there connected with much more secondary vital functions. This conclusion inspired the early researches of Professor Miescher, of Basle, in 1874, and, twenty years later, those of Professor Kossel, one of the most eminent physiological chemists in Germany.
In fact, these compounds have been found in all tissues which are rich in cellular elements with well-developed nuclei. The white globules of the blood furnished to Lilienfeld the first nucleo-histone ever isolated. The red globules themselves, when they possess a nucleus, which is the case in birds and reptiles as well as in the embryo of mammals, contain a nucleo-proteid which was easily isolated by Plosz and Kossel. Hammarsten, the Swedish chemist, who has acquired a great reputation from his researches in other domains of biological chemistry, prepared the nucleo-proteids of the pancreas in 1893. They have been obtained from the liver, from the thyroid gland (Ostwald), from brewers’ yeast (Kossel), from mushrooms, and from barley (Petit). They have been detected in starchy bodies and in bacteria (Galeotti).