Translations:Protein/9/en

Early nutritional scientists such as the German Carl von Voit believed that protein was the most important nutrient for maintaining the structure of the body, because it was generally believed that "flesh makes flesh." Karl Heinrich Ritthausen extended known protein forms with the identification of glutamic acid. At the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station a detailed review of the vegetable proteins was compiled by Thomas Burr Osborne. Working with Lafayette Mendel and applying Liebig's law of the minimum in feeding laboratory rats, the nutritionally essential amino acids were established. The work was continued and communicated by William Cumming Rose. The understanding of proteins as polypeptides came through the work of Franz Hofmeister and Hermann Emil Fischer in 1902. The central role of proteins as enzymes in living organisms was not fully appreciated until 1926, when James B. Sumner showed that the enzyme urease was in fact a protein.