Studies of Autolysis

In 1904 Lane-Claypon and Schryverl reported a latent period in autolysis amounting in the normal liver to about 4 hours. In the livers of fasting animals the latent period was absent or much shorter than in the well fed. If active trypsin preparations were introduced into the autolyzing liver mass, digestion began at once. These observations led the authors to the conclusion that in the living liver cell no free proteolytic enzymes existed; that the first stage of postmortem disintegration set free an active enzyme from a zymogen, and that the latent period represented, therefore, a survival period in the tissue. The authors further concluded that during fasting the zymogen was activated in some way, and thus autolysis int,ervened to allow the starving animal to utilize its own tissues for the development of energy by combustion, which otherwise would remain unavailable. The validity of this attractive hypothesis rests upon the rather limited observations reported in this one paper, and upon the interpretation of those observations. It has appeared to us worth while to examine further the early stages of autolysis of the liver in the hope that some new insight might be gained into the mechanism which starts and controls this important reaction. In the present paper we have made no attempt to test the differences between well fed and starving material, though both kinds are represented in our data. To a certain extent we have confirmed the findings of Lane-Claypon and Schryver, but our interpretation of the phenomenon is at variance with theirs. We have called attention to the great individual differences in appar-