A number of quantitative determinations of TMAO have been reported on various fish species of both freshwater and marine origin but very little is known about the comparative aspects of the TMAO content between the ordinary and bloody muscles of fish.
The author, therefore, carried out the measurement of TMAO, TMA and DMA in the bloody and ordinary muscle parts of 16 species of fish and the findings are as follows:
1) In the varieties of so-called dark-fleshed fish such as mackerel, sardine, skipjack, etc., the bloody muscles were rich in TMAO content, while in the ordinary muscles the TMAO content was poor and variable.
2) In white-fleshed fish such as seabass, Japanese gurnard and others the TMAO content was much higher in the ordinary muscle than in the bloody muscle.
3) With the exception of saury and gadoid fish, the TMAO-N content in the bloody muscle indicated less variable levels within a range of 20 to 40mg%, among the species of fish tested.
4) In each fish examined, the amount of TMA detected in the bloody muscle was larger than that in the ordinary muscle.
5) Although a very small quantity of DMA was found in the ordinary muscle of some kinds of fish, larger quantities of DMA were always observed in the bloody muscle of all species examined.
6) Formaldehyde was also detected in the bloody muscle whenever DMA was obviously found, and this fact may suggest a possible existence of enzyme(s) capable to form DMA and formaldehyde from TMAO in the bloody muscles of a rather wide variety of fish.
抄録全体を表示