SCIENCEALERT - You often need a lot of patience to be a scientist, and that's certainly been the case for researchers who have now found solid evidence for a hypothesis around vitamin B1 (or thiamine) that was first put forward almost 70 years ago.
In 1958, Columbia University chemist Ronald Breslow proposed that vitamin B1 performs key metabolic processes in the body by forming a molecular structure known as a carbene.
The problem: carbenes are highly unstable and reactive, and usually break down instantly in water. They should, by all accounts, be incompatible with the body's high water content.
But researchers led by a team from the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside) have now managed to keep a carbene intact in water for months in their lab.
"This is the first time anyone has been able to observe a stable carbene in water," says chemist Vincent Lavallo, from UC Riverside. "People thought this was a crazy idea. But it turns out, Breslow was right."