Uracil mustard is a mimic of the RNA component and DNA precursor uracil, and it also has a few reactive ends that can do some damage.
Those chlorines amount to very reactive ends; the idea here is that they're hopefully a little better targeted than generally toxic molecules like the plain old nitrogen mustards. Hopefully, most of your cancer drug ends up in cancer cells, and targeting DNA bases (which they go through like crazy) has been a common strategy.
More like this
There are 9 new articles in PLoS ONE today (as well as another
As I mentioned yesterday, I recently perused all the e-mails that Gmail had flagged as spam and to my dismay found a lot of legitimate e-mail, including mailing list e-mails and Movable Type e-mails notifying me of c
There was a lot wrong with Micheal 'Lilo' Behes description of HIV-1 in last years book, 'Edge of Evolution'.
Greetings, and welcome to this week's Carnival of Space! Before getting to the astro-goodness, Will has a question: How many of you get your astronomy news directly from the press release?
I had an O-chem professor in undergrad whose job it was in his European homeland's army to "diffuse" old mustard gas. I guess they had a whole bunch left over from a war that needed disposing of. Fun job!!