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Molecules: You'd better learn to live with them.
May 30, 2007
Category: Medicine
Acetaminophen/paracetamol is a great drug. It comes without a lot of the GI irritation problems of aspirin and other typical COX inhibitors. Unlike aspirin, it doesn't increase clotting time. No nagging feeling you're going to give your kid Reye's syndrome....
Posted by Molecule of the Day at 7:18 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 29, 2007
Category: Biology
The dirty secret of metabolism: oxygen was once useless, toxic, bacteria poop.
Posted by Molecule of the Day at 7:18 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 25, 2007
Category: Drugs
From medicated powder to cigarettes, it's no secret that small molecule ligands can induce a cold sensation. Usually, this means menthol. However, like any protein ligand, non-natural small molecules can stand in....
Posted by Molecule of the Day at 5:14 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 23, 2007
Category: Synthesis
You can't measure something unless you can see it. Scientists have loads of instruments to detect things by all kinds of methods, but the most popular and simplest has to be UV-vis spectroscopy. Shine some light over your stuff, see...
Posted by Molecule of the Day at 8:37 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 22, 2007
Last November I mentioned the Dess-Martin reagent. Hypervalent iodine reagents are mild oxidants that tend to be more soluble in organic solvent than many of the alternatives. Dess-Martin has largely supplanted another iodine oxidant - IBX acid....
Posted by Molecule of the Day at 7:55 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 21, 2007
Category: Food
Whenever I mention artificial sweeteners, it seems to rouse a fight about what's safe, what's not, saccharin this, Stevia that. Around the time saccharin was discovered, another sweetener came on the market: dulcin....
Posted by Molecule of the Day at 7:12 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 18, 2007
Category: Food
About a year ago, I covered aspartame, the sometimes-maligned intense artificial sweetener. There is still a camp of substantial size insisting aspartame is deadly. Of course, it's widely sold, and still FDA-approved, etc. There is one group of people for...
Posted by Molecule of the Day at 6:59 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 16, 2007
In the most common form of silica chromatography, more polar molecules stick to the stationary phase. Silica is just sand, and the polar silanol groups (-Si-OH) interact with the polar parts of the molecule. You can "reverse" the properties of...
Posted by Molecule of the Day at 7:31 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 15, 2007
Category: Synthesis
Here is a quickie: sodium triacetoxyborohydride. Most people use sodium cyanoborohydride as their mild reducing agent in reductive aminations. Triacetoxyborohydride works just fine and has the added advantages of not stinking and not being quite so poisonous. Sodium triacetoxyborohydride: now...
Posted by Molecule of the Day at 8:58 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 14, 2007
Category: Drugs
Ion-exchange resins are surprisingly simple things - here's the idea: just about everything that has a charge has to have an opposite charge around somewhere. Ususally, charged things float around willy-nilly in solution (your Na+ and Cl- in your salt,...
Posted by Molecule of the Day at 8:00 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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