Pharmacological and Therapeutic Potential of Myristicin: A Literature Review

Natural products have been used by humanity for many centuries to treat various illnesses and with the advancement of technology, it became possible to isolate the substances responsible for the beneficial effects of these products, as well as to understand their mechanisms. In this context, myristicin, a substance of natural origin, has shown several promising activities in a large number of in vitro and in vivo studies carried out. This molecule is found in plants such as nutmeg, parsley, carrots, peppers, and several species endemic to the Asian continent. The purpose of this review article is to discuss data published in the last 10 years at Pubmed, Lilacs and Scielo databases, reporting beneficial effects, toxicity and promising data of myristicin for its future use in medicine. From 94 articles found in the literature, 68 were included. Exclusion criteria took into account articles whose tested extracts did not have myristicin as one of the major compounds.     

Gas chromatographic--mass spectrometric determination of phenylacetic acid in human blood

Phenyl acetic acid, a metabolite of 2-phenyl ethylamine, acts as a neuromodulator in the nigrostriatal dopaminergic pathway stimulating the release of dopamine. The evaluation of phenyl acetic acid concentration in the biological fluid reflects phenyl ethylamine levels thus allowing the assessment of the modulatory role of this endogenous substance. Changes in biological fluids levels of 2-phenylethylamine and/or in its metabolite have been reported in affective disorders, such as depression and schizophrenia. Recently, the occurrence of the "attention deficit hyperactivity syndrome" has been frequently reported in childhood population and involvement of dopaminergic dysfunction in this disease has been suspected. A fast, reliable and reproducible method for the determination of phenyl acetic acid in human blood, is therefore needed in order to have a screening tool for monitoring both healthy childhood population and suspected "attention deficit hyperactivity syndrome" patients. The gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric method here described makes use of a deuterated internal standard in order to overcome problems related to the lack of reproducibility often encountered when a derivatization step is performed.     

Flexible Structures Based on a Short Pitch Cholesteric Liquid Crystals

We report on the realization and characterization of electro-responsive and pressure sensitive polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) conductive photonic structures combined with the reconfigurable properties of short pitch cholesteric liquid crystals (aligned in Grandjean configuration). By combining ion-implantation process and surface chemistry functionalization, we have overcome the insulating properties of PDMS and induced long range organization of cholesteric liquid crystals, thus controlling both diffraction and selective Bragg reflection of light by means of external perturbations (electric field, pressure). We have characterized our devices in terms of morphological, optical and electro-optical properties.     

Metadynamics study of a β-hairpin stability in mixed solvents

Understanding the molecular mechanisms that allow some organisms to survive in extremely harsh conditions is an important achievement that might disclose a wide range of applications and that is constantly drawing the attention of many research fields. The high adaptability of these living creatures is related to the presence in their tissues of a high concentration of osmoprotectants, small organic, highly soluble molecules. Despite osmoprotectants having been known for a long time, a full disclosure of the machinery behind their activity is still lacking. Here we describe a computational approach that, taking advantage of the recently developed metadynamics technique, allows one to fully describe the free energy surface of a small β-hairpin peptide and how it is affected by an osmoprotectant, glycine betaine (GB) and for comparison by urea, a common denaturant. Simulations led to relevant thermodynamic information, including how the free energy difference of denaturation is affected by the two cosolvents; unlike urea, GB caused a considerable increase of the folded basin stability, which transposes into a higher melting temperature. NMR experiments confirmed the picture derived from the theoretical study. Further molecular dynamics simulations of selected conformations allowed investigation into deeper detail the role of GB in folded state protection. Simulations of the protein in GB solutions clearly showed an excess of osmoprotectant in the solvent bulk, rather than in the protein domain, confirming the exclusion from the protein surface, but also highlighted interesting features on its interactions, opening to new scenarios besides the classic "indirect mechanism" hypothesis.     

Preparation and physical properties of novel nonionic surfactants and their grafting copolymers with linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE)

Three nonionic surfactants, S1, S2, and S3 and their acrylates, AS1, AS2, and AS3, were synthesized with poly(ethylene oxide) and diols such as glycol, 1,6‐hexanediol, and 1,10‐decanediol as the main starting materials. Their chemical structures were characterized by means of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and ¹H NMR. The surface activity and surface tension (γ) of S1, S2, and S3 were evaluated by a drop weight method. The surface tension was found to decrease with the length of the lipophilic spacer in the molecular chains (γ_S1 < γ_S2 < γ_S3). AS1, AS2, and AS3 were adopted as functionalizing monomers and grafted onto linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) with a melt reactive extrusion procedure. The graft degrees of LLDPE were determined by FTIR. Three grafted LLDPE samples with grafting degrees of 1.16% (AS1), 0.82% (AS2), and 0.71% (AS3) were prepared. Thermal and rheological properties of grafted LLDPE samples were studied with differential scanning calorimetry and a rotational rheometer. Crystallization rates of grafted LLDPE were faster than that of plain LLDPE at a given crystallization temperature because graft chains could act as nucleating agents. The isothermal crystallization behavior of grafted LLDPE was in accordance with the Avrami model only in the first stage, and deviated from the model with an increase in the crystallization time. Shear thinning at high shear rates and shear thickening at low shear rates were observed for the grafted LLDPE. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 43: 314–322, 2005     

A cryogenic underground observatory for rare events: CUORE, an update

CUORE is a proposed tightly packed array of 1000 TeO₂ bolometers, each being a cube 5 cm on a side with a mass of 750 g. The array consists of 25 vertical towers, arranged in a square of 5 towers by 5 towers, each containing ten layers of four crystals. The design of the detector is optimized for ultralow-background searches for neutrinoless double beta decay of ¹³⁰Te (33.8% abundance), cold dark matter, solar axions, and rare nuclear decays. A preliminary experiment involving 20 crystals of various sizes (MIBETA) has been completed, and a single CUORE tower is being constructed as a smaller scale experiment called CUORICINO. The expected performance and sensitivity, based on Monte Carlo simulations and extrapolations of present results, are reported.     

Conformational effects on circular dichroism in the photoelectron angular distribution.

The B-spline density-functional method has been applied to the conformers of the (1R, 2R)-1,2-dibromo-1,2-dichloro-1,2-difluoroethane molecule. The cross section, asymmetry, and dichroic parameters relative to core and valence orbitals, which do not change their nature along the conformational curve, have been systematically studied. While the cross section and the asymmetry parameter are weakly affected, the dichroic parameter appears to be rather sensitive to the particular conformer of the molecule, suggesting that this dynamical property could be a useful tool for conformational analysis. The computational method has also been applied to methyl rotation in methyloxirane. Unexpected and dramatic sensitivity of the dichroic-parameter profile to the methyl rotation, both in the core and valence states, has been found. Boltzmann averaging over the conformers reproduces quite closely the profiles previously obtained for the minimum-energy conformation, which is in good agreement with the experimental results.     

Regioselective reductive demethoxylation of 3,4,5-trimethoxystilbenes

Selective removal of the 4-methoxy group of 3,4,5-trimethoxystilbenes was performed under electron transfer conditions from Na metal in THF. Careful control of reaction conditions and quenching procedure allowed the synthesis of either (E)-3,5-dimethoxystilbenes or 3,5-dimethoxybibenzyls.     

On the Girth of Graphs Critical with Respect to Edge-Colourings

A graph G with maximum valency r is called critical if r + 1colours are needed for an edgecolouring, but every proper subgraphrequires at most r. In this note we consider the minimum orderf(r, g) of a critical graph of maximum valency r and girth g.We show that f(r, 3) = r+1 or r+2 according as r is even orodd, f(r, 4) = 2r+1,f(3, 5) = 9 and f(3, 6) = 15.