Molecules: You'd better learn to live with them.
In the news this week: aminopyralid:
Aminopyralid is an herbicide that may have made its way into some manure destined for home gardens and may have resulted in inferior produce. Interestingly, they think it's in manure not because of topical contamination, but via animals that ate contaminated silage:
It appears that the contamination came from grass treated 12 months ago. Experts say the grass was probably made into silage, then fed to cattle during the winter months. The herbicide remained present in the silage, passed through the animal and into manure that was later sold. Horses fed on hay that had been treated could also be a channel.
Tell me this: if you were a microbe, wouldn't you munch on that? Or if you were a liver, wouldn't you glycosylate that? I will admit to huge swaths of empty space where my understanding of pharmacokinetics/xenobiotic metabolism should be, but I'm surprised it makes its way out unscathed.
Life Science
Medicine & Health
Comments
It is indeed a bitt odd that it survives but I think there may be a rather subtle explanation: Normally a 2-Cl pyridine would be very reactive to substitution with electrophiles but here we have amino substitution on the ring that makes the ring more electron rich, on top of that there is also the carboxylate which is ionized at physiological pH, which does the same thing. The amino group sitting on a pyridine ring is not very reactive so I think there is a mutual cancelation of reactivity in all the groups. Interesting. Either very clever molecular design or dumb luck. I know what I think.
Posted by: Nanono | July 1, 2008 1:58 AM
Sprayed, environmentally degraded, fermented, digested, excreted, composted, and still active! When did you ever have an amino pyridine that didn't go to crud in air as you watched it? Let's recycle human sewage directly into drinking water. Nobody ingests and excretes pharma - therapeutic or recreational - right?
Posted by: Uncle Al | July 1, 2008 11:11 AM
doesn't glycosylation require a sugar?
Posted by: alyoshapo | July 1, 2008 4:50 PM
This molecule was designed to have residual activity against broad-leaf weed species. The silage as feed wasn't "contaminated", the product was purposely sprayed on it. As many garden vegetables are broad-leafed, this residual activity stunts their growth a year after being applied to pasture and after passing through an animal's digestive system. Truly alarming!
Posted by: kirsten | July 2, 2008 6:25 AM
Glycosylation requires a sugar, which we have plenty of floating around our bodies. Wouldn't aminopyralid act as a Schiff Base, or would glycosylation occur through [something happening] at the carboxyl group? I'm more of a meathead than I am an organic chemist...
Posted by: Conor | July 2, 2008 4:24 PM
this is scary.
Posted by: bodydetox | July 5, 2008 5:28 AM