Nitrogen metabolism of the isolated tissues of the rat

Abstract

Little study has been devoted to the anabolic aspects of nitrogen metabolism in animals. The reason, of course, has been the difficulty of obtaining experimental conditions in which these can be observed, measured, and analyzed. The experiments of Krebs and Henseleit (1) on the formation of urea from ammonia with Warburg’s method of surviving slices of liver suggested that this method might be useful in a direct attack on a number of problems of nitrogen anabolism in animals; i.e., it might be possible to observe reactions in which there is a gain in free energy. It appears that for these reactions the intact cell structure is necessary.