John Jacob Abel the position of chair of the department until he retired at the age of 75 in 1932. Ever since his early years in Europe, Abel showed great interest in isolating pure form of internal gland hormones. The first work that led to his international reputation as a pharmacologist and biochemist was the isolation of epinephrine from adrenal medulla. However, he was only able to isolate a monobenzoyl derivative of epinephrine. While he was improving his processes on decomposing the benzoyl derivative to obtain salts of epinephrine using saponification, a Japanese chemist J. Takamine, who had visited his lab, was able
Adipokinetic hormone Adipokinetic hormone Adipokinetic hormone (AKH) is a short peptide hormone that has been studied in insects. It is a lipid mobilising hormone and is responsible for regulating fuel transport in the haemolymph, for redirecting energy to other processes as required by the insect. AKH was initially discovered in the locusts "Locusta migratoria" and "Schistocerca gregaria" and is generally associated with aiding flight. Early observations of locusts showed that despite the fact that lipids are metabolised by flight muscle in order to maintain flight, which would be transported from the haemolymph, there was often still a high concentration of lipids in