SOURCE OF LIFE

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 59, 2 December 1933, Page 18

SOURCE OF LIFE

Scientists on the Trail

In a laboratory in the basement of the Liverpool University two scientists, Dr. R. A. Morton and Mr. J. R. Edisbury, are trying to track down the source of life. This is the elusive Vitamin E, which has never been isolated. Its nature is still uncertain, but it is a fact, established by biological research, that without it reproduction of the species ceases.

All the vitamins are necessary to life, but none is more important or more mysterious than this Vitamin E, absence of which leads to sterility. No one has yet succeeded in obtaining this “source of life” vitamin in really concentrated form.

The investigators, by using the spectroscope, hope to be able to estimate the vitamin content of materials rich in this substance, and. possibly, to isolate It. If they do this they will have made a discovery which, applied to human beings and livestock, will be of incalculable value to civilisation.

They are using a process of spectroscopy, developed In this laboratory a few years ago by Dr. Morton and Prof. I. M. Heilbron, now of Manchester University.

This apparatus, in which a high tension, high frequency current of a million volts is used to produce a concentrated spark about three-eighths of an inch long under water, has been used with great success recently by Mr. Edisbury in research work in connection with halibut-liver oil. This oil was known to contain Vitamin A—the vitamin which promotes growth and resistance to infectious diseases. It was not suspected, however, until these spectroscopic tests were' made, that halibut-liver oil contained anything from four to 250 times as much Vitamin A as cod-liver oil. “Salmon liver oil,” said Mr. Edisbury, “is a new source of Vitamin A which is receiving attention as a possible substitute for cod liver oil or the halibut-liver oil. “It has up to six or seven times the Vitamin A content of cod liver oil, aud may prove to be more easily obtainable halibut-liver oil.

“Our investigations in regard to Vitamin E have been going on for some time. We co-operate, of course, with the biological investigators, for the physiological effect of a vitamin is obviously the fundamental standard to which all other alternative tests must eventually be referred, and by which they must stand or fall. But by our quicker—and, when they are fully developed, more accurate—spect.rometric methods, we hope to hasten the process of isolating the anti-sterility vitamin.”