Participation of the ammonium ion in the transformation of glucose to amino acids in brain tissue

Abstract

The brain slices were incubated with uniformly labelled 14C glucose and ammonium nitrate labelled with 15N in the ammonium nitrogen for 60 min at 37[degree]C. It was shown that ammonia was readily incorporated by the brain slices into glutamine, glutamic acid and aspartic acid, but only to a small extent into [gamma]-aminobutyric acid, glycine and alanine. The significance of the low incorporation of labelled nitrogen into [gamma] -aminobutyric acid with respect to the high specific activity in glutamic acid is discussed.