The metabolism of plant and insect waxes

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Abstract
A general scheme for the metabolism of waxes has been presented, based on 2 hypotheses which are discussed in some detail. The primary alcohols are formed by reduction of the corresponding acids and the paraffins, secondary alcohols and ketones by indirect decarboxyla-tion of the corresponding (n [long dash]1) acid. The saturated acids, ketonic acids and hydroxy-acids are formed from unsaturated acids synthesized from shorter products. The scheme embraces the long-chain aliphatic constituents of known constitution, all of which can be derived from a series of unsaturated acids.