Occurrence of Dulcitol in a Red Seaweed

Abstract

THE occurrence of mannitol has long been recorded in seaweeds, but, so far as the literature reveals, its distribution is confined to the brown algæ, and hitherto it has been the only representative of the sugar alcohols known to occur in the algæ. We have recently had occasion to examine extracts of the red seaweed Bostrychia scorpioides, which grows on the salt marsh at Blakeney Point; from this material we were able to isolate, in crystalline form, the isomeric alcohol dulcitol. As this is the first recorded observation of this substance in algæ, we are proposing to examine a number of other red algæ, with the view of determining whether they also contain dulcitol, or whether we were dealing with an exceptional case. A fuller account of the experimental work will, it is hoped, appear before long in the Biochemical Journal.