Colorimetric determination of ascorbic acid in pharmaceutical preparations and biological samples

A simple and rapid method is described for the determination of L-ascorbic acid, based on its reduction of iron (III). The iron(II) thus formed is complexed with quinaldic acid and pyridine. The absorbance is measured at 380 nm after extracting the complex into chloroform. Beer's law is obeyed over the concentration range 2.5–25 g ml^–1 ascorbic acid. The results obtained are accurate and reproducible with the standard deviation of 0.0076. The method has been applied to the analysis of pharmaceuticals and biological samples with satisfactory results.     

Exploring new chemical space by stereocontrolled diversity-oriented synthesis

Natural products that act as highly specific, small-molecule protein-binding agents and as modulators of protein-protein interactions are highly complex and exhibit functional groups with three-dimensional and stereochemical diversity. The complex three-dimensional display of chiral functional groups appears to be crucial for exhibiting specificity in protein binding and in differentiating between closely related proteins. The development of methods that allow a high-throughput access to three-dimensional, skelatally complex, polycyclic compounds having few asymmetric diversity sites is essential and a highly challenging task. In the postgenomic chemical biology age, in which there is a great desire to understand protein-protein interactions and to dissect protein networking-based signaling pathways by small molecules, the need for developing "stereocontrolled, diversity-oriented synthesis" methods to generate natural product-like libraries is of utmost importance.     

A solution- and solid-phase approach to tetrahydroquinoline-derived polycyclics having a 10-membered ring

With the goal of library generation using a polycyclic derivative 5 having an enamide functional group, a simple and practical, enantioselective synthesis of tetrahydroquinoline derivative 2 was achieved. The phenolic hydroxyl group in compound 2 was utilized as an anchoring site for solid-phase synthesis. The ring closing metathesis approach yielded the desired polycyclic product 5 on solid phase in five steps (overall 40% yield). Compound 5 is a novel scaffold for the library generation of natural product-like polycyclics having a functionalized medium ring for obtaining a new class of small molecules to be utilized as chemical probes.     

Reaching into the major groove of B-DNA: synthesis and nucleic acid binding of a neomycin-hoechst 33258 conjugate

Synthesis of a neomycin-Hoechst 33258 conjugate is reported. The conjugate combines the ligands known to selectively bind in the duplex and the triplex groove. The conjugate stabilizes DNA duplex over DNA triplex. The conjugate selectively stabilizes the DNA duplex (in the presence of salt), with as little as 2 muM of the ligand leading to a DeltaTm of 25 degrees C.     

Defensins--non-antibiotic use for vaccine development

Vaccines should elicit protective and long lasting immune memory, which depends on well choreographed responses between innate and acquired immunity. Defensins are small host defense peptides of innate immunity hitherto reported to have antimicrobial activity, which also orchestrate chemotaxis and activation of effector immune cells, including immature dendritic cells. This review analyzes the biological meaning of the immunomodulatory and immunoenhancing features of defensins and their use for the development of novel vaccines to combat cancer and clinically relevant diseases.     

Combinatorial chemistry toward understanding the function(s) of carbohydrates and carbohydrate conjugates

Combinatorial chemistry has contributed significantly to understanding the structure-function relationships of biologically important molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. However, carbohydrates and carbohydrate conjugates, which have been identified as key modulators of several biological functions have not enjoyed the same measure of success. The complexity and synthetic challenges of carbohydrate conjugates have resulted in a number of conceptual approaches to rapidly access sufficient quantities of these biomolecules. This article summarizes these combinatorial approaches and also highlights fully automated library synthesis of artificial glycopeptides with the goals of understanding their biological roles.     

Extraction of bivalent vanadium as its pyridine thiocyanate complex and separation from uranium, titanium, chromium and aluminium

A simple method is described for the extraction of V(II) as its pyridine thiocyanate complex. Vanadate is reduced to V(II) in 1-2N sulphuric acid by zinc amalgam. Thiocyanate and pyridine are added, the solution is adjusted to pH 5.2-5.5 and the complex extracted with chloroform. The vanadium is back-extracted with peroxide solution. Zinc from the reductant accompanies the vanadium but alkali and alkaline earth metal ions, titanium, uranium, chromium and aluminium are separated, besides those ions reduced to the elements by zinc amalgam. The method takes about 20 min and is applicable to microgram as well as milligram amounts of vanadium.     

A high-yield,one-step synthesis of surfactant-free gold nanostars and numerical study for single-molecule SERS application

We report a high-yield synthesis of star-shaped gold nanostructures in one step, using a new surfactant-free wet chemistry method. Compared to the existing reports, these nanostars were found to have longer and sharper spikes anchored uniformly on the surface of the spherical core, allowing at least a few hot spots irrespective of the incident light polarization. The average experimental values of core radius and spike length were found to be 88.5 and 72 nm, respectively. Using these values in numerical simulations, the local electric field enhancement (η) and localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) spectrum were obtained. Moreover, the single-molecule surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) enhancement factor was found to vary from 10¹⁰ to 10¹³ depending on the excitation wavelengths. Our theoretical calculations suggest that these nanostructures can be used to fabricate efficient SERS-based biosensors for the detection of single molecules in real time and for predicting structural information of single molecules.     

Confined Water in Amyloid‐Competent Oligomers of the Prion Protein

Conformational switching of the prion protein into the abnormal form involves the formation of (obligatory) molten‐oligomers that mature into ordered amyloid fibrils. The role of water in directing the course of amyloid formation remains poorly understood. Here, we show that the mobility of the water molecules within the on‐pathway oligomers is highly retarded. The water relaxation time within the oligomers was estimated to be ≈1 ns which is about three orders of magnitude slower than the bulk water and resembles the characteristics of (trapped) nano‐confined water. We propose that the coalescence of these obligatory oligomers containing trapped water is entropically favored because of the release of ordered water molecules in the bulk milieu and results in the sequestration of favorable inter‐chain amyloid contacts via nucleated conformational conversion. The dynamic role of water in protein aggregation will have much broader implications in a variety of protein misfolding diseases.     

Advanced electrocatalytic materials based biosensors for cancer cell detection – A review

Herein, we have highlighted the latest developments on biosensors for cancer cell detection. Electrochemical (EC) biosensors offer several advantages such as high sensitivity, selectivity, rapid analysis, portability, low-cost, etc. Generally, biosensors could be classified into other basic categories such as immunosensors, aptasensors, cytosensors, electrochemiluminescence (ECL), and photo-electrochemical (PEC) sensors. The significance of the EC biosensors is that they could detect several biomolecules in human body including cholesterol, glucose, lactate, uric acid, DNA, blood ketones, hemoglobin, and others. Recently, various EC biosensors have been developed by using electrocatalytic materials such as silver sulfide (Ag₂S), black phosphene (BPene), hexagonal carbon nitrogen tube (HCNT), carbon dots (CDs)/cobalt oxy-hydroxide (CoOOH), cuprous oxide (Cu₂O), polymer dots (PDs), manganese oxide (MnO₂), graphene derivatives, and gold nanoparticles (Au-NPs). In some cases, these newly developed biosensors could be able to detect cancer cells with a limit of detection (LOD) of 1 cell/mL. In addition, many remaining challenges have to be addressed and validated by testing more real samples and confirm that these EC biosensors are more accurate and reliable to measure cancer cells in the blood and salivary samples.