THE discovery that phosphates play an essential part in alcoholic fermentation arose out of an attempt by the late Dr. Allan Macfadyen to prepare an anti-zymase by injecting Buchner's yeast juice into animals. As a necessary preliminary to the study of the effect of the serum of these injected animals on fermentation by yeast juice, the action of normal serum was examined. It was thus found that this exerted a two-fold effect in its presence the action of the proteolytic enzymes of the yeast juice was greatly diminished, and at the same time both the rate of fermentation and the total fermentation produced were considerably increased.
Address delivered at Stockholm on Dec. 12,1929, on the occasion of. the presentation of the Nobel Prizes.
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HARDEN, A. The Function of Phosphate in Alcoholic Fermentation1. Nature 125, 277–279 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/125277a0