Hideo Higashi

Biological Activity of Kitol and its Thermally Decomposed Products

We separated kitol from unsaponifiable matter of blue whale liver oil by chromatographing, and stuied the biological activity of kitol and its thermally decomposed products by animal examination. This preparation had a value of 603 for E (1%, 1cm) (290 mμ), and it seemed to be free from Vitamin A. The results obtained were as follows. (1) Kitol has little or no biological activity to the Rats. (2) The heated products (210°, 5 or 10 minutes in capillary tubes) of Kitel show the same biolgical activity as Vitamin A and this biological potency is better than that estimated physico-chemically with Beckman spectro-photometer. (3) So we separated these thermally decomposed products to 3 fractions by chromato graphing (Fig. 4, 5, 6) and examined the biological activity of each fraction by Rat-feeding, and we have found that the fraction II (maximum absorption at 325 mμ) show the same biological activety as Vitamin A (Table 4) and fraction I (free from Vitamin A) seems to be some biologically active substances.