Floss, Herbert

There were fire-resistant [bodies] as well as such that caught fire easily. The trick was to use the good ones to bum the bad. According to his [Herbert Floss s] research - which evidently had been far advanced - old bodies burned better than new ones, fat ones better than skinny ones, women better than men, and children not as well as women but better than men. From this it followed that old corpses of fat women were the ideal kind."101... 

The formation of ergot alkaloids from L-tryptophan is well-known (Herbert, 1989 Groeger and Floss, 1998 Markert et al., 2008). L-Tryptophan condenses with dimethylallylpyrophosphate (DMAPP) to give y,y-dimethylallyltryptophan (DMAT), which is modified via chanoclavine 1 to give agroclavine and finally elymoclavine (Fig. 2.14). Lysergic acid maybe formed from this last alkaloid. 

---