The present study has been carried out on the epidermal pigments of silkworm larvae, especially on the red pigments which are present at the eye spots of normal and other strains or at the supra-spiracular lines, and the basement parts of abdominal legs of “Zebra”(
Ze), “black”(
pT) etc., and also on the purplish brown pigments contained in the epidermis of the crescent portions of “knobbed” larva (
K), and the red pigments of “quail”(
q) by which the silkworm looks reddish especially in the 5th instar.
1) By the paper chromatographic analyses using formic acid as the solvent for the above mentioned pigments extracted by acid methanol, all the red pigments of +p, Ze, p
Tand q exhibit an orange spot with Rf 0.82, whereas in the purplish brown pigment in the epidermel cells of the crescent portion of K, two different spots re seen beside the orange spot (Rf 0.82), i.e., red (Rf 0.76) and purple (Rf 0.50)(Fig.1). Thus it may be concluded that the red pigment has only one pigment component, and the purplish brown pigments have three components.
2) These pigment components eluted with formic acid are analysed by spectrophotometer. The orange component has an absorption maximum at about 450 mμ, the red and the purple have a sholder at about 480 mμ, and 520 mμ respectively (Fig. 2. and 3).
3) The chemical natures of these pigment components are as follows: by oxidation with H
2O
2 the orange colour changes to yellow and by reduction with Na
2S
2O
4 turns pink. The red and purple pigment components become colourless by adding H
2O
2, but do not turn by Na
2S
2O
4 (Table 1).
4) These results support the following facts that the red pigments of the above mentioned strains are the same as or closely similar to the +chrome-I, and each red and purple pigment component in purplish brown pigments is plausibly homologous to + chrome-II and +chrome-III respectively, which have been distinguished in the egg and eye pigments of the silkworm (+chrome-I, II and la are tryptophan derivatives). From these results the author is inclined to regard these pigments found in the epidermal cells as the pigments derived from tryptophan.
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