Isolation and Structure Studies of Mutagenic Principles in Amino Acid Pyrolysates

The present paper describes the detail of the serach of mutagenic principles in tars from amino acids, especially from tryptophan. A series of amino acids was pyrolyzed and was tested their mutagenicity to find that basic fractions from pyrolysates of tryptophan, ornitine, glutamic acid, serine, lysine and creatine showed potent mutagenicities to TA98 than the fractions from pyrolysates of other amino acids. Among them the active principles in the pyrolysate of tryptophan were identified as 3-amino-1, 4-dimethyl-5H-pyrido-[4, 3-b] indole (designated as Trp-P-1) and 3-amino-1-methyl-5H-pyrido [4, 3-b] indole (designated as Trp-P-2). Among several antimicrobial tar constituents, it was found that 2-amino-5-phenylpyridine, benzo [f] quinoline and phenanthridine also were mutagenic.