Abstract
In this paper it was presumed that L-ascorbic acid was metabolized by two different pathways. One of them might be carried through the course of D-araboascorbic acid and, perhaps its phosphate → 3-keto-6-phosphogluconate and equilibrium mixture of the two appeared to be formed. The latter was already known as an intermediate in the conversion of 6-phosphogluconate to ribulose-5-phosphate and D-ribose-5-phosphate. On the other hand, the presence of Warburg-Dickens pathway in the cells was supposed from the experiments that D-gluconic acid and D-ribose were metabolized by the cells while other pentoses such as DL-xylose, DL-arabinose were not. From the results above mentioned, one of the metabolic pathway of L-ascorbic acid was proposed as the following schemes : [chemical formula]
