History and discovery of terpenes

Terpenes are aromatic compounds found in many plants. The common plant sources of terpenes are tea, thyme, cannabis, Spanish sage, and citrus fruits (e.g., lemon, orange, mandarin). The term 'Terpene' is derived from the term 'turpentine'. They are responsible for the odor of pine trees and for the colors of carrots and tomatoes. β-Carotene, found in carrots, and vitamin A are both terpenes.

The essential oils were used in the ancient Egypt for various ceremonies. Camphor was introduced by Arabs around 11th century.

The method of getting plant essential oils via fatty extraction was identified by the early Middle Ages. The process of distillation of oils from rosemary and sage was described by Arnaud de Villanosa (1th century).

Analyses of oils obtained from plants started by French botanist Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière in 1818. Dumas proposed the name ‘Terpene” derived from turpentine. In 1887, Otto Wallach proposed that isoprenoid unit (5C) is present always in terpenes.

When Otto Wallach began his systematic studies of the terpenes, he observed that individual terpene structures contained multiples of a 5-carbon unit that allowed them to be classified according to the number of such units they contained. The canonical C5 unit proved to be isoprene, which Wallach recognized as the core terpenoid structure.

The structure of camphor was discovered by Bredt in the year 1893, that of pinene via Wagner in year 1894 and that of citral by Tiemann in the year 1895.

The structure of beta carotene from carrot was isolated by Wackenrodder and its correct molecular formula was determined by Will Statter.
History and discovery of terpenes

Early discovery of cocoa beans by European

Around 1300 AD, the Toltecs and later the Aztecs established their communities in Mexico. Adopting much of the Toltec tradition and religion, the Aztecs worshipped Queztalcoatl, the feathered god of cocoa. They consumed chocolate mainly as part of their religious ceremonies honoring Queztalcoal.

Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and is famous because he found something he wasn't looking for. The fourth of Christopher Columbus left Spain on May 1502.

The first meeting of Western civilization with cocoa occurred: Christopher Columbus reached the island of Guanaja off the coast of Honduras., and he was greeted by natives later received the gift of a cup of chocolate. The natives gave him a sackful of cacao beans in exchange for some of his own merchandise.

Columbus at first, then Cortes, discovered in the Americas the cocoa plant, but only Hernando Cortez brought the seeds to Europe.

The Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez went to America in 1519. He visited the Mexican emperor Montezuma. He saw that Montezuma drank cacao mixed with vanilla and spices. Cortez took some cacao home as a gift to the Spanish King Charles.

Though Hernando Cortez had ventured to Mexico in search of gold, he was impressed by the fact that the Aztecs used cocoa beans as currency. Cortez had started the first cocoa plantations on Trinidad, Haiti, and the West African island of Bioko to grow “money” to trade with Aztecs for gold.

Starting from 1660, the drinking of hot sweet chocolate spreaded across Europe: Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, and also Austria and Italy.
Early discovery of cocoa beans by European

Discovery of Cyclamate

In 1937 Michael Sveda a graduate student at the University of Illinois was working in the lab on the synthesis of anti-fever medication.

One day in the laboratory of Prof. Audrieth, he picked up a cigarette lying on his lab bench, put it in his mouth, and discovered that it tasted surprisingly sweet.

Sveda then tasted every substance in sight and traced the sweetness to a compound known as sodium cyclohexylsulfamate. Five years later, Sveda and his professor obtained a patent and assigned the rights to DuPont, Sveda's new employer.

Michael Sveda

After some initial development by duPont, cyclamate was taken up (under licence) by Abbott Laboratories, a pharmaceutical firm in North Chicago that hope to produce a sweetener suitable for diabetics and other people on sugar restricted diets.

This substance, which proved to be approximately 30 times sweeter than sugar, was first marketed in 1949 as sodium cyclamate in tablet form for use by diabetics.

In 1953, a mixture of 10 parts cyclamate to 1 part saccharin largely replaced the cyclamate-only product, because taste panels had judged that combination to be more palatable.

Sodium cyclamate

Cyclamate is generally used in foods as either the sodium or calcium salt. Since 1937, many other sulfamates have been synthesized, although none have been developed for use in foods.

In November 1959, cyclamate was place in the Food and Drug Administration’s list of GRAS. Cyclamate is approved as a sweetener in at least 130 countries while it is currently banned in the United States.
Discovery of Cyclamate

Discovery of pectin

The preparation of fruit jellies was carried out long before the discovery of pectin. However, the first information on water soluble substances having a strong gelatinizing effect, and present in fruit, was given by Vauquelin in 1790. He showed that the expressed juice of tamarinds and other fruits solidifies, when left at rest, to a transparent jelly, which may be purified by draining off the juice and washing.

Pectin was first isolated in 1825 by Henri Braconnot, though the use of pectin for making jam and marmalade was known long before. He defined pectin as the gelatinous principle in fruit that gave fruits the ability to form jellies when boiled with sugar.

Pectin structure

Braconnot recognized that sugar and the proper pH were necessary for the reaction, and he mentioned that he had to add a small amount of acid “to break up the pectates” when making his jellies. Braconnot derived the term ‘pectin’ from the Greek word πηκτικός meaning “to congeal or solidify”.

Modern usage confines the word ‘pectin’ to a series of polysaccharides based on poly - α- (1-4) galacturonan.

However the first recorded commercial production of pectin extract was in Germany in 1908 after the process spread to the US where Robert Douglas obtained a patent in 1913. However in 1930s, pectin was commercially extracted from dried apple pomace and citrus peels.
Discovery of pectin

History and discovery of vitamin K

In 1929, Henrik Dam of Denmark, a biochemist at the University of Copenhagen, discovered vitamin K. Vitamin K is a fat soluble vitamin has been implicated in both cardiovascular and bone health.

At that time Dam was studying the synthesis of cholesterol in chickens. Dam found a hemorrhagic disease in chicks that were fed a diet from which all lipids had been removed.

Dam hypothesized that an unidentified lipid factor had been removed from the chicks’ feed. It was the only substance capable of halting a hemorrhagic disease in which blood does not coagulate.

Hemorrhages were prevented when unextracted fish meal was included in the diet.

In 1930 Horvath first mentioned that an unknown factor was necessary for blood clotting in chicken.

Following further research Dam called it ‘koagulations vitamin’ or ‘vitamin K’ and the letter that he assigned it is still used today.

Dam later succeeded in isolating the agent from alfafa and identifying it, for which he received the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine.

The structure was determined to be 2-methyl-3-phytyl-1,4-naphthoquinone (vitamin K1).

After the initial discovery of vitamin K, Edward Doisy determined that the main source of vitamin K was through the diet, particular from green vegetable and fish meal.
History and discovery of vitamin K

The Discovery of Enzyme

The most varied and most highly specialized proteins are those with catalytic activity--the enzymes.

The word enzymes comes from the Greek root ‘enzymos’, which means “to cause change.”

Historically, biological catalysis has been used by mankind for thousands of years, ever since fermentation was discovered as a process for brewing and bread making in ancient Egypt.

It was not until the 19th century AD, however, that scientist addressed the question of whether the entity responsible for processes such as fermentation was a living species or a chemical substance.

The first isolation of an enzyme by Payen and Persoz in 1833. They added ethanol to an aqueous extract of malt and obtained a heat labile precipitate that was utilized to hydrolyze starch to soluble sugar.

The substance in this precipitate, which they called ‘diastase’, is now known as amylase.

In 1857, Louis Pasteur established that the process of fermentation was closely associated with the growth and life of yeast.

Eduard Buchner coined the term called ‘zymase’ which found in yeast cells was responsible for fermentation.

What is enzyme? Enzyme is a protein that speeds up or catalyzes a chemical reaction. It is a protein catalyst employed by a cell to speed up metabolic reactions.

It was Duclaux who proposed in 1898 that all enzymes should have the suffix “ase” so that a substance would be recognized as an enzyme from the name.
The Discovery of Enzyme

History of Corn

History of Corn
Corn (Zea mays L.) is native to the Americas and is their most important cereal crop.

Corn originated in Mexico, evolving form the wild grass Teosinte (Zea mays sp. mexicana).

Archeology evidence indicates that corn was domesticated and grown as a crop by native American as early as 5,000 B.C in Mexico’s valley of Tehuacan.

Corn becomes symbol of religion and prosperity in The Mayan civilization.

From this center corn spread northward to Canada and southward to Argentina.

Among the discoveries made by the explorer Christopher Columbus during his visit to the New World in 1492 was this staple food of the native Americans, known to them as “mahyz.”

Corn is is still universally known as maize from the early Spanish translation.

Maize was not popular known as corn until the American colonists applied this British term for grain.

Following Columbus’s discovery, corn was transplanted to Spain from where it quickly spread across Europe and to Africa and Asia.

Corn played an important role in the colonization and settling of United States.

The native Americans taught the colonists how to convert the grain into food and livestock feed.

Bread made from corn quickly became staple foods in the American colonies and other foods, such as mush, porridge and breakfast grits, were important to pioneers migrating west.

Early improvement in corn as accomplished by farmers selecting seed from the hardiest and most productive plants in their open pollinated fields.

However, in the early 1800s two predominant races of corn – Virginia Gourdseed and Northeastern Flints – grown in the eastern seaboard states were cross, demonstrating the superiority of hybrid corn.

This cross was repeated many times as settlers migrated west, and from these lines the Corn Belt Dents emerged.

Corn Belt Dents have been steadily improved to become the most productive race of corn in the world – indeed, the most productive cereal crop in the world.
History of Corn

Short History of Vitamin D

Hippocrates, the father of medicine, used heliotherapy or exposure to sunlight to treat phthisis.

The Greek historian, Herodotus (485-426 BC), observed that Persian warriors had much softer skulls than Egyptian warriors and attributed it to the turbans worn by Persians and Hippocrates described as disease resembling rickets in 130 AD.

The first scientific description of a vitamin D-deficiency, namely rickets, was provided in the 17th century by both Dr. Daniel Whistler (1645) and Professor Francis Glisson (1650).

Cod liver oil was first described as a medicinal agent for the treatment of chronic rheumatism in 1789.

Rickets captured the imagination of many chroniclers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The cause of this was a lack of a vitamin that is not a vitamin.

Beginning in the 1820s, studies showed that administering doses of cod liver oil to afflicted children could cure rickets.

The major breakthrough in understanding the causative factors of rickets was the development in the period 1910 - 1930 of nutrition as an experimental science and the appreciation of the existence of vitamins.

It was in 1919/20 that Sir Edward Mellanby, working with dogs raised exclusively indoors (in the absence of sunlight or ultraviolet light), devised a diet that allowed him to unequivocally establish that the bone disease, rickets was caused by a deficiency of a trace component present in the diet.

In 1921 he wrote, "The action of fats in rickets is due to a vitamin or accessory food factor which they contain, probably identical with the fat-soluble vitamin."

Shortly thereafter E. V McCollum and McCallum succeeded in inducing a rickets-like disease in chickens by administering an incomplete diet. The disease could be cured with cod-liver oil. They assumed that vitamin, present in cod-liver oil, was responsible for the curative effect.

In 1923 Goldblatt and Soames clearly identified that when a precursor of vitamin D in the skin (7-dehydrocholestrol) was irradiated with sunlight or ultraviolet light, a substance equivalent to the fat-soluble vitamin was produced.

Huldschinsky, Hess and Steenbock in 1924 found that a great number of foodstuff, having no antirachitic properties, became antirachitic after irradiation with sunlight or ultraviolet light. The substance activated by sunlight was called ‘provitamin D.’

Several other independent observations in the 19th and early 20th centuries fostered further links between sunlight and cutaneous vitamin D synthesis.

The first analogue of the vitamins D were determined in the 1930s in the laboratory of Professor A. Windaus at the University of Gottingen in Germany.

With the chemical isolation and finally synthesis of the two parent or native D vitamins, vitamin D2 (egocalciferol) and vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol), an etiology therapy for rickets and osteomalacia was established.

Vitamin D2 which could be produced by ultraviolet irradiation of ergosterol was chemically characterized in 1932. Vitamin D3 was not chemically characterized until 1936 when it was shown to result from the ultraviolet irradiation of 7-dehydrocholesterol.

In 1970, it is learned that vitamin D was not the biological active principle for healing bone disease.
Short History of Vitamin D