Nicotinic acid vitamin alkaloids derived from

Besides being fundamental constituents of proteins they are the parent substances from which powerful hormones are derived, for example, adrenaline (epinephrine), noradrenaline (norepinephrine), thyroxine and related substances, 5-hydroxytryptamine (enteramine, serotonin), and the plant hormone indoleacetic acid. Tryptophan is also the precursor of the B vitamin nicotinic acid and hence of part of the important pyridine nucleotides. All three aromatic amino acids are potential precursors of other substances having powerful physiological activity, for example, many of the alkaloids. Errors in the metabolism of the aromatic amino acids in man can give rise to sometimes serious, but fortunately comparatively rare, disorders such as alkaptonuria and phenylketonuria. The numerous metabolic pathways involved in aromatic amino acid metabolism therefore make an important as well as an interesting study. 

In practice, eluents of widely varying polarity have been used. Very weakly polar steroids (oestrenols) can be quantitatively eluted with hydrophobic solvents like methylene dichloride (cf Table 14) [217], whereas difficulties are reported in the elution of the more polar progesterone under the same conditions [691]. Chloroform has been used to elute dinitrophenylhydrazones from silica gel and opium alkaloids from alumina [470, 535]. Methanol and ethanol are often used for elution of substances of all types of compound class from silica gel [213, 215, 259, 434] or alumina [122, 437]. Butyl acetate has been chosen as the most suitable eluent for penicillin V [486]. Acetone has proved suitable for recovering ubiquinones [733]. Polar neutral, acid and basic aqueous eluents have also been employed, e.g., water for mucic acid derivatives [451] (cf Table 14), 1% Tween 80 solution for cobalamin [128], 0.2 N sulphuric acid for Vitamin Bg factors [702], 34% ammonium persulphate solution for nicotinic acid [702] and ammonium hydroxide for azo dyes [638]. Nitro-4-acetaminophenetoles have been extracted from alumina with the highly polar dimethylformamide [489]. 

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