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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 277, Issue 27, 16, July 5, 2002
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The Determination of Gases in Blood and Other Solutions by Vacuum
Extraction and Manometric Measurement. I.
(Van Slyke, D. D., and Neill, J.
M. (1924) J. Biol. Chem. 61,
523–543)
Donald Dexter Van Slyke (1883–1971) was born in Pike, New York and
attended high school in Geneva, New York. In biochemical circles, he was known
universally as Van with no last name required. He received a Bachelors degree
in Chemistry and a Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry (1907) from the
University of Michigan. He had intended to become an agricultural chemist like
his father, but after his father met P. A. Levene at the Rockefeller Institute
for Medical Research (later Rockefeller University) he convinced his son to
work with Levene. (Levene was the author of an earlier Journal of
Biological Chemistry (JBC) Classic
(1).) Van Slyke's biochemical
career thus began at Rockefeller in 1907 and would continue until 1949. His
first independent report described the quantification of aliphatic amino acids
by using nitrous acid to measure 
-amino acid nitrogen
(2). This was a gasometric
method, an approach that characterized his research career. It has been said
that if a biochemical process involved a gas, Van Slyke could measure it.
In 1914, Van Slyke was appointed chemist at the newly opened Rockefeller
Hospital, although he was not trained in medical chemistry. He noted that
patients dying from diabetes experienced an acidotic coma, but there was no
way to assess accurately the onset of acidosis or to measure the effects of
alkali therapy. To this end, he devised a simple gasometric method for
measuring accurately the concentration of sodium bicarbonate in a milliliter
of blood. For this assay he invented the Van Slyke volumetric gas apparatus,
which was soon found to be so useful that it was found in virtually all
clinical laboratories and many biochemistry laboratories as well. The
culmination of his work on blood acid-base balance was published between 1921
and 1924 (3,
4) and established the basic
parameters that are used even today for diagnosis of acid-base abnormalities
and includes the paper selected as this JBC Classic. This paper describes the
construction and use of the manometric system and the methodology for
measuring and calculating the CO2, O2, and
concentrations in blood. (An
advertisement for the Van Slyke manometric apparatus is presented along with
the Classic paper.) The new method improved both the accuracy and sensitivity
of his original volumetric apparatus, and with it he published a particularly
important series of papers on the complete gas and electrolyte equilibria in
blood and their variation as a function of respiration. These studies focused
on the role of hemoglobin as an O2 and CO2 carrier, and
Van Slyke was able to account quantitatively for the effect of pH changes on
O2 and CO2 transport and for the distribution of water
and diffusable ions, ,
Cl–, and H+ between blood plasma and red cells
(4).
Among his other scientific contributions, he developed approaches with a sound biochemical basis to study clinical problems such as acidosis and kidney disease. He showed that the liver played an important role in amino acid metabolism and that the kidney produces ammonia. He also discovered a new amino acid, hydroxylysine, which is a prominent constituent of collagen (5).
The majority of Van Slyke's 317 publications are in the JBC. At the age of
31, he was asked to become the Managing Editor of the JBC and served in that
capacity until 1925. He was involved in the review of every paper and took
personal responsibility for maintaining the high standards of the Journal. It
is reported that he occasionally rewrote papers for authors, if he felt the
science was worth reporting. After resigning as Managing Editor, he continued
to serve as a member of the Editorial Board until 1950. In 1949, he became
professor emeritus at Rockefeller, and although he could have continued his
research there, he decided to accept the position of Assistant Director for
Biology and Medicine at the newly formed Brookhaven National Laboratory. He
continued his research at Brookhaven until a few months before his death at
the age of
88.1
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1 The biographical information for this Classic Introduction was taken from
two articles (6,
7). 
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