Iodine Bioinorganic Chemistry

Iodine in abiotic and biotic environments

“…Iodine exists in the natural environment in several oxidation states and in the form of various inorganic and organic species with different reactivity and mobility in abiotic environments [32,46]. Chemical speciation of iodine occurs in different environmental compartments (e.g.…”

“…The predominant species of iodine in the environment are I -(iodide), IO 3 -(iodate), and organic iodine [46]. Small portions of I 2 (molecular iodine) and HIO (hypoiodous acid) may also exist in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and soils, but their lifetimes are very short.…”

“…In addition, iodination of organic matter components (e.g. proteins, lipids, polyphenols, humic substances) with the aid of both abiotic and biotic processes can occur in soils, sediments and natural waters [41,46]. Transformation of inorganic iodine species to organic iodine plays an important role in iodine immobilization, especially in a surface soil-water system.…”

“…Soils are also involved in the global iodine cycle, being the second largest source of iodine volatilization to the atmosphere after the oceans [32,42]. At the same time, the transformation of inorganic iodine species into organically bound iodine and vice versa with the participation of predominantly biological processes contributes to the natural circulation of iodine between abiotic and biotic environments [4,25,46,50].…”

Larger laboratory scale synthesis of 5-methyluridine and formal synthesis of its L-enantiomer

“…a transformation of the D-allose (a hexose) to D-ribose (a pentose) can be performed using orthoperiodic acid H5IO6 followed by NaBH4 reduction. 36,37 The orthoperiodic acid is strong enough (pKa ca 3.3 38 ) to promote a hydrolysis of the more reactive C5-C6 acetonide in 9 to liberate a diol 10 which was subsequently cleaved by the same reagent to furnish the aldehyde 11 which in turn was subjected to NaBH4 reduction to yield the ribo compound 12. This procedure is very attractive and in fact it was successfully used on a small scale (1 g) in good yields (e.g.…”