Vitamin B₆ - History

History

Vitamin B₆ is a water-soluble compound that was discovered in the 1930s during nutrition studies on rats. In 1934, a Hungarian physician, Paul György discovered a substance that was able to cure a skin disease in rats (dermititis acrodynia), this substance he named vitamin B₆. In 1938, Samuel Lepkovsky isolated vitamin B₆ from rice bran. Harris and Folkers in 1939 determined the structure of pyridoxine, and, in 1945, Snell was able to show the two forms of vitamin B₆, pyridoxal and pyridoxamine. Vitamin B₆ was named pyridoxine to indicate its structural homology to pyridine. All three forms of vitamin B₆ are precursors of an activated compound known as pyridoxal 5'-phosphate (PLP), which plays a vital role as the cofactor of a large number of essential enzymes in the human body.

Enzymes dependent on PLP focus a wide variety of chemical reactions mainly involving amino acids. The reactions carried out by the PLP-dependent enzymes that act on amino acids include transfer of the amino group, decarboxylation, racemization, and beta- or gamma-elimination or replacement. Such versatility arises from the ability of PLP to covalently bind the substrate, and then to act as an electrophilic catalyst, thereby stabilizing different types of carbanionic reaction intermediates.

Overall, the Enzyme Commission has catalogued more than 140 PLP-dependent activities, corresponding to ~4% of all classified activities.