1.History of glutamate production.
Sano C1. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009 Sep;90(3):728S-732S. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.2009.27462F. Epub 2009 Jul 29.
In 1907 Kikunae Ikeda, a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University, began his research to identify the umami component in kelp. Within a year, he had succeeded in isolating, purifying, and identifying the principal component of umami and quickly obtained a production patent. In 1909 Saburosuke Suzuki, an entrepreneur, and Ikeda began the industrial production of monosodium l-glutamate (MSG). The first industrial production process was an extraction method in which vegetable proteins were treated with hydrochloric acid to disrupt peptide bonds. l-Glutamic acid hydrochloride was then isolated from this material and purified as MSG. Initial production of MSG was limited because of the technical drawbacks of this method. Better methods did not emerge until the 1950s. One of these was direct chemical synthesis, which was used from 1962 to 1973. In this procedure, acrylonitrile was the starting material, and optical resolution of dl-glutamic acid was achieved by preferential crystallization.
2.Structure and behaviour of the free radicals generated in gamma irradiated amino acid and iminodiacetic acid derivatives.
Osmanoğlu S1, Aydın M, Osmanoğlu YE, Dicle IY, Başkan MH. Spectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc. 2011 May;78(5):1611-4. doi: 10.1016/j.saa.2011.02.016. Epub 2011 Feb 18.
An EPR study has been carried out to investigate the structure and behaviour of the free radical formed γ-irradiated l-alaninamide hydrochloride, dl-glutamic acid monohydrate and N-(2-carboxyethyl) iminodiacetic acid powders at room temperature. The observed paramagnetic species have been attributed to the CH(3)ĊHCONH(2), HOOCCH(2)CH(2)ĊHCOOH and HOOCCH(2)CH(2)NĊHCH(2)(COOH)(2) radicals, respectively. Some spectroscopic properties and suggestions concerning possible structure of the radicals were also discussed in this study.
