Nature of Peptones

Abstract

IN a letter published in NATURE¹, a method was described by us whereby the ratio N-total cleavable/N-split hydrolytically may be easily computed, and hence the extent of cleavage which has been performed by one or several proteinases acting on a given protein or peptone determined. Since then, still more proteins and peptones have been investigated and it seems desirable to give a brief account of the results achieved. It should be emphasized beforehand, however, that the proteins investigated by us generally showed the same behaviour as regards their cleavability by the proteinases employed irrespective of their physical-chemical properties, chemical composition and source of occurrence, as indicated in Table 1 below.