Abstract
WE have recently shown1 that the caterpillars of the flour moth, Ephestia kuehniella, grow slowly on a purified diet in which all the known vitamins of the B-complex are provided in pure substance. The length of the larval stage is about 7–8 weeks, as compared with 5–6 weeks on a diet which contains yeast or yeast extract. A preparation of dried grass juice (Cerophyl Laboratories) was found to be an excellent source of the missing factor which, in its relations to charcoal, seemed to behave like folic acid2. It was adsorbed on norrite at pH 3 and was contained in the eluate, but not in the filtrate. We later obtained synthetic folic acid (Lederle Laboratories)3 and established that this is the missing factor. On a purified diet, with folic acid, most of the larvæ pupated after 5–6 weeks ; whereas without folic acid they mostly died and none pupated before the eighth week. The minimal optimal requirements seem to be about 2 µgm./gm. of the dry diet, that is, of the order of the riboflavin requirements of another insect, Tribolium confusum. We have also some evidence that crystalline vitamin Bc (Parke Davis and Co.)4 has a similar, if not identical, effect as folic acid.
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FRAENKEL, G., BLEWETT, M. Folic Acid in the Nutrition of Certain Insects. Nature 157, 697 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/157697b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/157697b0
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