Further Experimental Differentiation of Vitamins B and G

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Abstract
Dried bakers' yeast yielded a much larger proportion of its vitamin B (B1) than of its vitamin G (B2) to extraction with 80 per cent alcohol. In 95 per cent alcohol, as used in these experiments, no measurable amount of the vitamin G of yeast was dissolved; in 80 per cent alcohol the solubility was appreciable; in 60 per cent alcohol the vitamin G was more soluble. Hence, within the limits of these experiments, the solubility of vitamin G increases as the proportion of water in the alcohol: water solvept is increased. It was found best to judge the solubility of the vitamin from the feeding of the residue rather than of the extract, for a part of the extracted vitamin G disappeared and it is suggested that this may have been due to a partial destruction of vitamin G by oxidation. There did not appear to be a corresponding loss of the extracted vitamin B. Rats lacking vitamin B showed a much more rapid decline of food consumption than those lacking vitamin G. Our work confirms and extends the observations of other investigators that vitamin B (B1) has a specific relation to the maintenance of appetite and the prevention of polyneuritis in rats; that growth in the rat requires both vitamins B and G and responds, within limits, according to the level of feeding of each; and that lack of vitamin G, under sufficiently controlled conditions, quite regularly produces in the rat the deficiency disease designated as pellagra-like by Goldberger and his associates and by Chick and Roscoe, though the particular type of skin lesion which this term suggests is not characteristic of the cases of most complete deprivation of vitamin G. Whether the observed variability of symptoms of the G-avitaminosis is connected with multiple nature of vitamin G is a question still under investigation.

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