The Occurrence of Coenzyme A in Plants

Abstract

The plant materials were chosen as representative of the various families of flowering plants. More detailed work was done on spinach, mung bean, pea, wheat germ, and corn since these plants are being widely used in current studies of plant metabolism. Direct Assays: Seeds, dried plant parts, or materials high in Co A may be directly assayed for Co A by the methods listed below: Weighed samples were homogenized with an equal weight of water at 80? C. After two minutes in the Waring blendor, the material was transferred to a beaker and boiled for five minutes. Occasionally more water had to be added at this point. The material was filtered through cheesecloth and clarified by centrifuging at 4600 ? g. The sediment was re-extracted in a similar manner and the filtrates combined. It was found that a third extract did not contain a measurable amount of Co A. The combined filtrates were directly assayed for Co A. Concentration of Co A: Since the extracts must contain five units of Co A per ml for the methods used here, the extracts of many plants cannot be directly assayed. In such cases extracts prepared as above were concentrated at reduced pressure below the freezing point to one-fourth of their original volume. The concentrated solutions were used for Co A