PubChem
When finding a female scientists' data turns into an archeological treasure hunt.
A few months ago, I decided it would be interesting to celebrate various scientific contributions by making images of chemical / molecular structures in the Molecule World iPad app and posting them on Twitter (@MoleculeWorld). Whenever I can, I like to highlight scientific contributions from women on their birthdays. Tomorrow's post will feature Dr. Isabella Karle, an x-ray crystallographer who worked on the Manhattan project and solved structures of interesting molecules like valinomycin and a South American…
On pinene and inhibiting enzymes.
People of a certain age may remember a series of really funny commercials featuring Euell Gibbons and his famous question about whether you've ever eaten a pine tree. "Some parts are edible" said Euell.
Perhaps some parts are, but other pine tree products aren't so nourishing. Crystallography365, aka @Crystal_in_city had a couple of fun blog posts about pinene, a chemical made by pine trees, that also inhibits cytochrome P450 2B6.
I was inspired by their posts and by my experience with Cytochrome P450 to go a little farther. We like to use cytochrome…
APRIL was so much fun, that I thought I should find a molecule for May. I searched both the Gene database, the structure database, everywhere, without any luck.
Finally, I decided to change the search and use the date instead of the name of the month. And here we have it, straight from PubChem. A molecule for May. 05012008 is the compound substance ID.
5/1/2008 Update:
This structure turned out to be a bit surprising. Not does it look highly reactive, it also seems to disappear in the PubChem database. Sometimes I can find it by using the SID, sometimes I can't. I hate that.
For those of…