Peptides research background

Inevitably, references quoted in this Report will be, on the whole, simply illustrative examples, intended to convey to the reader the type of research being carried out and the kinds of information being obtained. For a detailed background to the whole subject of protein chemistry, readers are referred to the Specialist Periodical Reports on Amino-acids, Peptides, and Proteins, Volume 9 of which covers the literature published in 1976. All the enzymes mentioned in... 

In 1943, Harper and Paper (bottom right) demonstrated that extracts of the mucosa of the upper intestine contained a substance that, on intravenous administration, stimulated the pancreas to secrete enzymes (amylase) as opposed to secretin, which stimulated water and bicarbonate secretion. In addition, no effect on volume output was noted. The British researchers proposed the name pancreozymin to describe the former (background). Thereafter, in 1966, the peptide chemists Jorpes and Mutt demonstrated that CCK and pancreozymin shared the same chemical structure and that the two biologic effects-of gall bladder contraction and pancreatic enzyme secretion—were induced by this agent. 

Fortunately, my graduate research in biochemistry at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston, involved studies on the mechanism of formic acid oxidation in animal tissues and on the incorporation of this one-carbon compound into nucleic acid components and their precursors. This provided me with experience in the use of isotopic tracers and the background in biochemical research which proved crucial, in later years, for unraveUng the intermediates and mechanisms of synthesis of purines and other compounds, when I discovered the prebiotic synthesis of adenine and other building blocks of nucleic acids, and a general pathway or method for the prebiotic formation of oligodeoxynucleotides and peptides. 

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