Little is known about the chemical reactions involved in the conversion of carbohydrate to fatty acids. Hypothetical schemes have been abundant, and have included aldol condensation of acetaldehyde (Magnus-Levy2"), aldol condensation of acetaldehyde with pyruvic acid (Smedley,30 Smedley and Lubrzynska81), direct condensation of hexoses (Fischer1"), and other possibilities (Hilditch15). The lack...

Carbohydrat,es are fermented by Clostridium acetobutylicum and related microorganisms with the formation of acetic acid, n-butyric acid, acetone, ethanol, and n-butanol. It has been conclusively proved that the butanol arises by the reduction of the butyric acid (1, 2). As yet, however, there is no exact information as to the sequence of reactions by which butyric acid is formed from glucose by...

The mechanism of formation of coumarin (1) by Perkin reaction from salicylaldehyde was shown to involve exclusively a basecatalyzed intramolecular aldol-type condensation of O-acetyl salicylaldehyde (2) as an obligatory intermediate followed by dehydration. Direct evidence in support of this contention was provided by the formation of coumarin and 3-phenyl coumarin(5) as the sole products in th...