RESEARCH CONCERNING THE POSSIBILITY OF SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC METHODS FOR DETERMINING THE URIC ACID LEVELS IN BIRD FECAL DISCHARGE
Camelia Hodosan, Lucica Nistor, Andra Suler, Daniela Ianitchi, S. Barbuica
Abstract
With animals, the nitrogen coming from amino acids is primarily eliminated through one of three ways: free ammonia, urea with animals (ureotelic species), and uric acid with birds (ureotelic species).
The urea that is found in urine comes from the breakdown of arginine. In the nutritional design, arginine is indispensable for birds because, unlike mammals, it is not possible for them to regenerate starting from ornithine and carbamoyl phosphate.
In bird urine, uric acid represents the primary method for eliminating nitrogen, and the most important constituent (80%) next to ammonium salts, urea, creatine, and free amino acids.
Its design is for the purine bases where the molecule's four atoms of nitrogen come from glycine, glutamine, and aspartic acid.
In this paper, a spectrophotometer method of determining uric acid from bird fecal discharge is described, adapted from the HEILMAYER spectrophotometer method for uric acid from blood serum.
