Studies on the Biochemical Change in the Fish Muscle - I : On the Changes in Amount of Myosin Fraction and Glycolytic Products of Muscle in Newly Caught Fish

In this paper we dealt with the post mortem changes in the appearent amount of myosin fraction and some glycolytic products in fish muscles by death conditions and following times its death. The sample, carp (Cyprinus carpio), horse-mackerel (Decapters muroadsi) and mackerel (Scomber tapeincephalus) were divided into three different killing grups, the one was instant death which was killed cutting head off immediately after the catch. The second grup of fish was death in agony which was death after struggling for several minutes on floor board, and the last grup was died by electric shocks. The results were summarized in Fig. 1 5 and Table 1, the phenomena were observed as follows. 1) The longer becomes the lapse of time after its death the less becomes the amount of myosin-fraction, and after being kept for 20-25 hours at 25 °C its trace fades away entirely. 2) Temporal increasing of myosin fraction, disappearing of ATP, and death rigor-finish take place almost simultaneously ; in case of the fish meat kept at 25°C occurring about 8 hours after its death. 3) The changing mode of the amount of glycolytic products in muscle, except that of glycogen, keeps nearly same state throughout the above mentioned dying conditions, but the breakdown - rate of ATP and Phosphagen is more early at the muscle of the instant death-fish than at that of the gradual death-fish, while no difference in the changing tendency is observed between instant death-fish and electric shock one