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SURVIVAL FACTOR IN NEOPLASTIC AND VIRAL DISEASES
By
WILLIAM FREDERICK KOCH, Ph.D., M.D.
Appendix I
SUGAR OXIDATION
Although specific enzymes play a part in all metabolic reactions, it is also possible that non-enzymatic reactions play an equally important role in certain positions. There is no harm in visualizing a non-enzymatic factor in sugar oxidation. Fructose is much more easily oxidized than glucose so the enzymatic conversion of glucose to fructose is assumed. The non-enzymatic condensation of the Carbonyl group of fructose with the amine group of the cell’s oxidation mechanism to form an azomethine double bond offers the advantage of holding the fuel and receiving the energy produced by the first oxidative steps. The diagrams picture the process. When cleavage takes place and the Amadori rearrangement is reversed, an acetyl free radical is formed which adds to the phosphoric acid residue of the cell and further oxidation steps pass their energy on to the cell via this union. This happens so long as molecular oxygen is at hand. When it is not, the end products are lactic acid under the reduction flux of the medium and the fermentation system takes over. The free radical and peroxide free radical intermediaries, in the presence of adequate oxygen, lead to such unstable oxidation-inviting fragments, that they can never be trapped.
It must also be recalled that though the carbon hydrogen bond strength equals 58.6 Kg-calories per molecule and the 0-H bond- 110.2 Kg-calories, the set-up in sugar gives the hydroxyl hydrogen great freedom, so that when sugar is placed in heavy water, the deuterium replaces the hydrogen atoms at random and here the bond strength is so greatly reduced that dehydrogenation of the hydroxyl group virtually leaves an oxygen free radical. The very structure of fructose invites dehydrogenations of the carbon atoms and the hydroxyl groups, which gives specific and non-specific dehydrogenators the preference over any agencies involved in the Krebs’s Cycle. If the progress would follow the scheme outlined above, no free degradation products would be at hand to be isolated. However, if the above process is crippled, the last steps would require known dehydrases and the latter products would be identifiable. The removal of hydroxyl hydrogen would take place very early, however, even before the carbon chain is broken and thus the process requires more facts for clarification. One therefore sees how futile it is to outline such mechanism as the Citric Acid Cycle or any other mechanism, in view of the facts stated above, and in view of the lack of further directive data.