Guanidino Compounds from a Sea-Anemone, Anthopleura japonica Verrill

Abstract

The Sakaguchi positive nine guanidino compounds are detected from an extract of the sea-anemone, Anthopleura japonica Verrill, by means of chromatography and electro-phoresis on paper. These compounds were identified as taurocyamine, glycocyamine, γ-guanidino-β-hydroxybutyric acid, β-guanidino-propionic acid, γ-guanidinobutyric acid, γ-hydroxy-L-arginine, arginine, agmatine and hydroxyagmatine, a new compound. Seven guanidino compounds of them excepting taurocyamine and hydroxyagmatine were isolated in pure form by a series of fraction-ation on ion-exchange resin columns and characterized.
The author wishes to express his thanks to Prof. S. Shibuya for his valuable advice, and to Assistant Prof. N. Izumiya for his interest. Thanks are also due to Dr. Y. Fujita for a gift of γ-hydroxy-L-arginine. This work was supported in part by the Scientific Research Grant from the Ministry of Educa-tion.