Studies on the extracts from the muscle of molluscs-VII. Distribution of meso-.ALPHA.-iminodipropionic acid and D-.ALPHA.-iminopropioacetic acid in a variety of aquatic organisms.

Abstract

The following method was established for quantitative determination of two analogous compounds, meso-α-iminodipropionic acid (IDPA) and D-α-iminopropioacetic acid (IPAA), found in marine molluscs by the authors. The procedure is to combine electrophoretic separation with densitometric determination. This gave a high recovery, over 96 per cent for both IDPA and IPAA. The distribution of the two compounds was studied in a variety of aquatic organisms by using this method. It was found that they had a very limited distribution of the species belong-ing only to the two phyla of animal kingdom, Mollusca and Annelida, which were all organismspertaining to the sea.in mollusca, IDPA and IPAA were detected in many species of three main classes: Gastropoda, Pelecypoda, and Cephalopoda. Although there is no obvious relationship between their distributions and class, it can be seen that both compounds are distributed more widely in Pelecypoda than in other classes. The distribution pattern of the two compounds strongly resembled that of octopine.