Thiamine Triphosphate in Bakers' Yeast

Abstract

IN earlier work on cocarboxylase (thiamine diphosphate) as a phosphate carrier, an unknown spot was often found, not reported in the previous publication¹, when extracts from liver were chromatographed in order to isolate thiamine diphosphate from other phosphate compounds. This unknown spot gave, like thiamine diphosphate, a blue fluorescence in ultra-violet light after having been oxidized with potassium ferricyanide in alkaline solution. It also, like thiamine diphosphate, had biological activity when tested in a Warburg apparatus with washed yeast. In 1949 Velluz et al. ² reported their work on synthetic thiamine phosphate, thiamine triphosphate, and its relation to thiamine diphosphate. When comparing this compound on a chromatogram with the unknown compound referred to above, I found them to behave in exactly the same manner. the same time Rossi-Fanelli et al. ³ confirmed the occurrence of thiamine triphosphate in rat liver.