Rats were administered 100 mg/kg intraperitoneally or 75 micrograms intraventricularly prior to training in a shuttle box avoidance and in shock motivated brightness discrimination tasks. Both treatment groups significantly improved the retention of learned behavior 24 hours later. In naive animals, intraventricularly applied L-fucose (75-200 ug) caused an increase in the rate of protein synthesis in the hippocampus, significantly increasing the total proteins and mainly attributed to Tris-insoluble protein fractions.

12.5 mg/mL of L-fucose was added to several different cell line cultures in Wymouth's medium containing 10% calf serum, 50 units/mL penicillin, 50 ug/mL streptomycin, and 30 ug/mL kanamycin. L-fucose had marked effects on cell morphology in the following cell lines: 3T3, BHK21, and Human Skin Fibroblasts. The 3T3 mouse fibroblasts showed a marked inhibition of growth when cultured with L-fucose, as well as the decreased incorporation of uridine, leucine, and thymidine in growing but not confluent cultures.