Molecules: You'd better learn to live with them.
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Category: Stinky
Posted on: July 3, 2007 7:54 PM, by Molecule of the Day
At the blog's previous location awhile back, I covered an oligoamine; spermine - which helps to compact DNA in cells. Spermine isn't volatile enough to smell much, but a shorter amine, putrescine, is.
Honestly I don't get the low MW amine thing. Pyridine smells pretty awful to me, but triethylamine and the like are just a bit ripe to me. Putrescine, apparently, occurs in decomposing flesh - it's the decarboxylation product of hte amino acid lysine.
Back Thursday.
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Comments
Teresa Nielsen Hayden posted a dramatic and moving description of her first-hand experience with putrescine a couple of years ago at her must-read blog Making Light.
Be sure to read the comments.
Posted by: HP | July 4, 2007 12:41 PM
You seem to have posted this twice. ;-)
Posted by: Shalini | July 5, 2007 2:00 AM
Something about 4-carbon compounds. The nose really shuns so many of these.
Zz
Posted by: HelicalZz | July 5, 2007 10:56 AM