General structure of ?fecapentaenes? ? the mutagenic substances in human faeces

On the Stereochemistry of Fecapentaene-12

“…Synthetic fecapentaene-12 has been prepared by several methods. In addition to those already cited, which yield, respectively, mixtures of E and Z isomers at the 5-position [3,4] the 1-position [3,5] (10), it has been prepared as the 1-Z isomer [5] (11) and the all-E isomer [3] (11,12). The availability of the isomers 3, 4, and 5 enables us to draw the following conclusions about the stereochemistry of natural fecapentaene-12.…”

“…In the first place, the natural product consists largely of the £ isomer at the C-1 position, as indicated by its lH-nmr spectrum (2,3); however, a careful comparison of the published spectrum (3)1 with the spectra of the separate, synthet-Fecapentaene-12 can be resolved into three peaks by hplc (6), and the mixture of all-Eand 5-Z-fecapentaene-12 [3,4] separates cleanly into two peaks. The retention volumes of these peaks are recorded in Table 1.…”

Plasmalogens the neglected regulatory and scavenging lipid species

“…Biochemically they contain a pentaenyl group (Bruce et al, 1982;Gupta et al, 1983Gupta et al, , 1984Hirai et al, 1985) and are produced by anaerobic Bacteroides spp. (Knudsen, 1986;Lederman et al, 1980;Van Tassel et al, 1982) from precursors known as plasmalopentaenes.…”

A Model Study of Fecapentaenes: Mutagens of Bacterial Origin with Alkylating Properties

“…Most invertebrate axons (1) as well as vertebrate axons (2) and skeletal muscles (3) rely on sodium ions as the predominant inward charge carrier during depolarization. In contrast, invertebrate muscles investigated so far seem to use calcium ions to generate action potentials (4,5). Voltage-dependent calcium channels seem to be more evolutionarily primitive than sodium channels in that they are present in unicellular organisms (6) and are the first channels to appear during the embryonic development of excitable cells (7).…”