AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

A study of the metabolism of steroid hormones is beset with many difficulties if the usual biochemical methods are to be applied. One of the most important difficulties, perhaps, is that the quantities of material present in animal tissues are usually extremely small. With the availability of radioactive isotopes, the problem was considerably simplified. In fact, if a steroidal hormone is made radioactive, it becomes a simple matter to determine its distribution in tissues and therefore much easier to obtain extracts indicative of its metabolic pathway.