Thomas Burr Osborne (chemist)

Thomas Burr Osborne (August 5, 1859 – January 29, 1929) was a biochemist and co-discoverer of Vitamin A. He is known for his work isolating and characterizing seed proteins, and for determining protein nutritional requirements. His career was spent at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.

Thomas was the son of lawyer Arthur Dimon Osborne and the grandson of US Representative Thomas Burr Osborne.[1][2][3][4]

His life exhibited "a single purpose, the understanding of the relationships of proteins to each other and the animal world. He began his researches upon vegetable proteins in 1888,..."[5] He published his findings in The Vegetable Proteins in 1909.

That year Osborne joined forces with Lafayette Mendel to find what amino acids are necessary for the survival of the laboratory rat. At the Connecticut experimental station they developed a lab with about 200 rats whose dietary intake was carefully controlled.[6] The program was described by J.R. Lindsey and H.J. Baker:[7]

The striking differences in amino acid composition of plant proteins, which had been documented by Osborne, suggested that possible differences might exist in their biological value. The nutritive values of various purified proteins from cereal grains and other plant sources were compared for growth and maintenance in rats. This led to supplementation of "incomplete proteins" with those amino acids limiting each foodstuff’s "biological quality" (eg. Tryptophan and lysine). Casein was found to be a "complete protein", thus paving the way for the use of this protein in modern rat diets. Within a few years it was possible to list the "essential" and "nonessential" aminio acids.

The science of nutrition thus evolved beyond the caloric energy of food to the structural issue of essential amino acids.

Works

References

  1. ↑ "Obituary: Thomas Burr Osborne".
  2. ↑ Chittenden, R. H. (1933). "Thomas Burr Osborne (1859-1929)". Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 68 (13): 651–654. JSTOR 20023001.
  3. ↑ "Thomas Burr Osborne". PMC 2606178.
  4. ↑ Vickery, H. B.; Mendel, L. B. (1929). "THE WORK OF THOMAS BURR OSBORNE (1859-1929)". Science 69 (1789): 385–389. Bibcode:1929Sci....69..385V. doi:10.1126/science.69.1789.385. PMID 17839302.
  5. ↑ Bradford Vickery, Hubert (1931). "Thomas Burr Osborne (1859 — 1929) from National Academy of Sciences". Biographical Memoirs 14: 8.
  6. ↑ Edna Louise Ferry (1919) "Nutrition experiments with rats: a description of methods and technique", Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine 8: 735 to 45
  7. ↑ J. Russell Lindsey & Henry J. Baker, Chapter one: Historical Foundations of The Laboratory Rat by Mark A. Suckow, Steven H. Weisbroth, and Craig L. Franklin (2005) ISBN 0080454321