Blue Food Dye Does NOT Treat Spine Injury in Rats

You have probably seen those cute pictures of the blue mice by now. I first saw it on Neatorama, which linked to an article at Wired. Both said in their headlines that a Food Dye was responsible for reducing the damage from spinal cord injuries. To be fair, both sites mentioned in the articles themselves that the actual molecule used was similar to the food dye FD&C blue No. 1, but it was not in fact the dye used in blue M&M's.

The compound used in the Spinal Injury study was Coomassie Brilliant Blue G, which is commonly used as a protein stain for gel electrophoresis and in the Bradford protein assay. As you can see, they are not quite the same - Coomassie has a couple of extra methyl groups, and the substituent on the "top" benzene in this image is different.



The interesting thing to me is how it "works." According to the research article published in PNAS, the initial injury to the spinal cord is followed by a secondary injury. Over time, the area of damaged tissue expands from the original site of injury and the researchers reasoned that this expansion should be preventable.

The P2X7 receptor is a membrane channel that opens in response to increased ATP. In the injuries studied, the traumatized tissue releases a lot of ATP which in turn activates the P2X7 channels causing them to open. This has been linked to the spread of the injury, so anything that prevented the opening of the P2X7 channel could be expected to reduce or eliminate the secondary injury.

The Coomassie Blue acts as an antagonist for the P2X7 receptor. It binds to the receptor but does not activate the receptor - so the channel remains closed. Presumably Coomassie Blue and ATP both bind to the same site on P2X7 and only one can occupy the binding site at a time. Because the receptor is bound to the Coomassie Blue, ATP is unable to bind and activate the receptor. Since the opening of the channel is what leads to the expansion of the injury, keeping it closed will limit this expansion.

This is an exciting discovery, but it is likely to be only the first step. In the study, they treated the spinal cord injuries after 15 minutes. People who suffer spinal cord injuries might be helped by treatment with Coomassie Blue, but it is unlikely that they would receive treatment within 15 minutes.


Peng, W., Cotrina, M., Han, X., Yu, H., Bekar, L., Blum, L., Takano, T., Tian, G., Goldman, S., & Nedergaard, M. (2009). From the Cover: Systemic administration of an antagonist of the ATP-sensitive receptor P2X7 improves recovery after spinal cord injury Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (30), 12489-12493 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0902531106

Blue Man Group video

Blue Thousand and One from Blue Man Group HD on Vimeo.

With the news about Blue Mice lately, here's a cool video from the Blue Man Group.

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Steven Chu on The Daily Show

John Stewart reveals Energy Secretary Steven Chu's secret identity as a super-hero who combats climate change.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Steven Chu
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Science Tattoos

Here's the neurotransmitter Seratonin from the Science Tattoo Emporium at Discover Magazine

Learning makes your brain happy

Ed Yong at Not Rocket Science writes about a research paper showing a link between learning and thirst in rhesus monkeys. In

Why information is its own reward - same neurons signal thirst for water, knowledge:

he writes:

To me, and I suspect many readers, the quest for information can be an intensely rewarding experience. Discovering a previously elusive fact or soaking up a finely crafted argument can be as pleasurable as eating a fine meal when hungry or dousing a thirst with drink. This isn't just a fanciful analogy - a new study suggests that the same neurons that process the primitive physical rewards of food and water also signal the more abstract mental rewards of information.

As commenter oscarzoalaster puts it:

So there is actual objective evidence that curiosity can be as important a desire as food and water! I feel more normal now!!! Thank you!

If only teaching were so easy.


via Learning makes your brain happy - Boing Boing

Element 112 - Copernicium

Goodbye Ununbium.

Thirteen years after it was first discovered, Element 112 has been officially added to the Periodic Table and its discoverers have suggested the name Copernicium (Cp) in honor of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus who proposed the heliocentric model of the solar system.

Of course, IUPAC is cautious and the name isn't official yet.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | New element named 'copernicium'

Lipase-Catalyzed Synthesis of a "Green" Surfactant

Surfactants are molecules that lower the surface tension in water. They behave this way because of their dual nature: a long, hydrophobic carbon tail attached to an ionic end, typically an acid or ammonium group. Surfactants are used in a variety of industrial applications including detergents and wetting agents. A number of widely used surfactants are problematic in that they are non-biodegradable and toxic. PFOA and PFOS are perfluorinated compounds (all hydrogens replaced with fluorines) – the fluorines make the compounds very good surfactants, but also very unreactive (and not biodegradable). They are also known carcinogens. SDS and SLES are not so bad, but still they are irritants and contain sulfonate groups that make them not as easily biodegradable as other compounds.

This article describes the synthesis of an alternative surfactant that is both more biologically friendly (non-toxic and biodegradable) and uses “green” chemistry methods that improve the efficiency of the synthesis and reduce hazardous waste products. N-Acyl palmitoyl ethanolamine is derived from two common constituents of biological lipids: the fatty acid palmitic acid and ethanolamine. Like soap, this surfactant is cheap, non-toxic and biodegradable. Like many industrial surfactants, and unlike soap, it is not prone to forming soap scum with hard water.

They used the enzyme Lipase to catalyze the reaction between ethanolamine and a fatty acid (or its ethyl ester). There are two possible products depending on which end of the ethanolamine reacts: either a hydroxy amide or an amino ester. Perhaps not too surprisingly, the hydroxy amide is formed exclusively. Amides are generally more stable than esters, amines are stronger nucleophiles than alcohols, and as the authors point out themselves amino esters with only two carbons between the N and O will rearrange on their own to the more stable amide form. Lipase was chosen because it is a flexible catalyst and the reaction takes place under mild conditions (no strong acids or bases to neutralize at the end).

They investigated three different sets of reaction conditions:

1. reactants in solution, conventional heat source
2. reactants in solution, microwave heating
3. reactants in solid state, microwave heating
   

The enzyme itself was attached to porous resin beads. For the solution-phase experiments, the enzyme and reactants were added to dioxane. For the solid-phase experiment, the reactants were dissolved in a small amount of solvent which was added to the enzyme and then evaporated to leave the reactants as a film on the enzyme-containing beads. Both microwave-heated reactions went considerably faster than conventional heating, and the solid-phase reaction was faster that the solution.

What exactly makes this "green?" While dioxane is not the most desirable solvent, it can be recovered afterwards and re-used. Otherwise, there is little waste. If fatty acids are used as the starting material instead of the corresponding ester there are no waste byproducts (such as ethanol) to separate and dispose of safely, and no strong acids or bases to neutralize. Even the enzyme is re-usable. And the product hydroxy amide is of low toxicity and should be biodegradable as well. If the solid-phase reaction with microwave heating turns out to be practical, it would greatly improve the efficiency of the process by speeding-up the reaction and improving the yield and purity of the products.

Kidwai, M., Poddar, R., & Mothsra, P. (2009). N-acylation of ethanolamine using lipase: a chemoselective catalyst. Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry, 5 DOI: 10.3762/bjoc.5.10