Accumulation of Glycine in the Fat Body of the Silkworm, Bombyx mori L.

Abstract

INVESTIGATIONS of intestinal transport of amino-acids in the locust^1,2 and silkworm^3,4 have shown no evidence for active accumulation in a transport from the insect gut of amino-acids. When glycine-2-¹⁴C was administered in vivo to fifth instar larvae of the silkworm, 96 per cent of the radioactivity was incorporated into various tissues within 1 h whereas in vitro only 19 per cent of the activity was transported by the mid-gut of silkworm (unpublished work). These results suggested that continued absorption of glycine by the intestine could be aided by a facilitated diffusion mechanism in which amino-acids are rapidly removed from the site of absorption either by accumulation into other tissues or by degradation. Although the insect fat body has been assigned both accumulatory and dissimilatory roles⁵, the mechanism of accumulation of amino-acids has not been investigated. Our present experiments show that the silkworm fat body possesses an efficient mechanism for accumulating glycine and that both the accumulation and the release of glycine are metabolically controlled.