ACS Chemistry for Life

January 2011 – Issue 1

This issue highlights those areas of endeavor with summaries of more than a dozen research articles, written in non-technical format, based on research published in ACS’ 39 peer-reviewed scientific journals and Chemical & Engineering News, its weekly newsmagazine. We hope you share our delight about the use of proteins in coffee beans as pesticides; a new genre of environmentally friendly detergents; raves from Europe over “NoMix” toilets; new lubricants that save gasoline; evidence that people over 50 may be consuming too much copper and iron; super-strong carbon nanotubes so small that 50,000 would fit across the width of a human hair; and the IYC Virtual Journal‘s other vignettes on chemistry.

Battling the force that wastes 1 out of every 10 gallons of gasoline in cars
Chemical & Engineering News

Engine friction could become less of a problem for fuel-conscious consumers thanks to promising new oils and other materials that scientists are developing. One in every 10 gallons of gasoline in the average car goes to overcoming friction in the engine — about 1.4 million barrels of oil wasted per day or almost $31 billion worth of fuel (at $60 per barrel) lost every year. High-tech lubricants and additives now in development could vastly reduce the effect of friction and improve energy efficiency in everything from car engines to power-generating wind turbines. That could improve the fuel economy of cars by 3-5 percent, according to one estimate.

Fungus among us could become non-food source for biodiesel production
Energy & Fuels

Victoriano Garre and colleagues describe a process for converting oil from an abundant producer, a fungus called Mucor circinelloides, into biodiesel without even extracting oil from the growth cultures. The resulting fungus-based biodiesel meets commercial specifications in the United States and Europe and production could be scaled to commercial levels. Manufacturers usually produce biodiesel fuel from plant oils — such as rapeseed, palm, and soy, but expanded production from those sources could foster shortages that mean rising food prices. In addition, oilseeds require scare farmland, and costly fertilizers and pesticides.

Tobacco and its evil cousin, nicotine? They’re good — as a pesticide!
Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research

Cedric Briens and colleagues have discovered that nicotine in tobacco could be used as a natural pesticide. Concerns about the health risks of tobacco have reduced demand and hurt tobacco farmers in some parts of the world, leading scientists to seek new uses for tobacco. A “green” pesticide industry based on tobacco could provide additional income for farmers, as well as a new eco-friendly pest-control agent. Briens tested tobacco bio-oil against a wide variety of insect pests, including 11 different fungi, four bacteria, and the Colorado potato beetle, a major agricultural pest that is increasingly resistant to current insecticides. The oil killed all of the beetles and blocked the growth of two types of bacteria and one fungus.

Clean and Green: Supermarket shelves awash in eco-friendly laundry detergents
Chemical & Engineering News

Laundry manufacturers and chemical suppliers are working hand-in-hand to develop new cleaning, aimed at making cleaning more efficient and environmentally friendly. C&EN Assistant Managing Editor Michael McCoy points out in the cover story that this trend in innovative fabric cleaning products is occurring despite a rocky economy in 2009, which led to sales declines for premium laundry products such as Tide. Overall, however, the liquid detergent market managed to rack up $3.1 billion in U.S. sales in 2009, according to the article. Products include new detergents and other laundry aids that contain natural, sustainable ingredients that are less likely to harm the environment than conventional cleaners as well as specialty cleaners that help reduce energy or water consumption.

NoMix toilets get thumbs-up in seven European countries
Environmental Science & Technology

People in seven European countries have positive attitudes toward a new eco-friendly toilet that could substantially reduce pollution problems and conserve water and nutrients, scientists in Switzerland are reporting. Judit Lienert and Tove Larsen note that the so-called NoMix toilet collects urine separately instead of mixing it together with feces as in conventional toilets. Urine contains 80 percent of the nitrogen and 50 percent of the phosphorus arriving at wastewater treatment plants. This reduces the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous nutrients that trigger algae blooms and in pharmaceutical residues, which can enter waterways and pose a threat to fish. Separating urine also allows its use as an agricultural fertilizer.

Diet of contaminated insects harms endangered meat-eating plants
Environmental Science & Technology

Iain Green and Christopher Moody report evidence that consumption of insects contaminated with cadmium may be a factor in the mysterious global decline of meat-eating, or carnivorous, plants. Many species of carnivorous plants — which have the amazing ability to lure, trap and digest insects — have become endangered through habitat loss, illegal poaching, and pollution. They fed contaminated house fly maggots to a group of endangered white-topped pitcher plants (Sarracenia leucophylla) and found that cadmium accumulated in the plants’ stems in a way that can be toxic and disrupt growth. The findings emphasize the importance of limiting carnivorous plants’ exposure to cadmium, they suggest.

Proteins in unroasted coffee beans may become next-generation insecticides
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Peas, beans and some other plant seeds contain proteins, called globulins, which ward off insects. Coffee beans contain large amounts of globulins, and Paulo Mazzafera and colleagues wondered whether those coffee proteins might also have an insecticidal effect. Their tests against cowpea weevil larva, insects used as models for studying the insecticidal activity of proteins, showed that tiny amounts of the coffee proteins quickly killed up to half of the insects. In the future, scientists could insert genes for these insect-killing proteins into important food crops, such as grains, so that plants produce their own insecticides.

Household detergents, shampoos may form harmful substance in waste water
Environmental Science & Technology

Scientists are reporting evidence that certain ingredients in shampoo, detergents and other household cleaning agents may be a source of precursor materials for formation of a suspected cancer-causing contaminant, NDMA, in water supplies that receive water from sewage treatment plants. William Mitch and colleagues note that scientists have known that NDMA and other nitrosamines can form in small amounts during the disinfection of wastewater and water with chloramine. The report notes that sewage treatment plants may remove some of quaternary amines that form NDMA. However, quaternary amines are used in such large quantities that some still may persist and have a potentially harmful effect in the effluents from sewage treatment plants.

Consumers over age 50 should consider steps to cut copper and iron intake
Chemical Research in Toxicology

Scientific evidence links high levels of copper and iron to Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, and other age-related disorders. After age 50, high levels of these metals can damage cells in ways that may contribute to a range of age-related diseases. George J. Brewer and colleagues suggest those over age 50 avoid vitamin and mineral pills that contain copper and iron; lower meat intake: avoid drinking water from copper pipes; donate blood regularly to reduce iron levels; and take zinc supplements to lower copper levels.

Trojan Horse ploy to sneak protective drug into brains of stroke patients
Molecular Pharmaceutics

William Pardridge and colleagues are reporting the development of a long-sought method with the potential for getting medication through a biological barrier that surrounds the brain, where it may limit the brain damage caused by stroke. The researchers found an antibody that can go through the blood brain barrier and linked it to erythropoietin to make a hybrid protein. Tests showed that the approach worked in laboratory mice, with the hybrid protein successfully penetrating the blood-brain barrier. The advance will allow scientists to begin testing erythropoietin’s effects on mice with simulated stroke and other brain disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, so that scientists can establish the most effective dose and best timing for possible future tests in humans.

Firefly protein lights pathway to improved detection of blood clots
Bioconjugate Chemistry

The enzyme that makes fireflies glow is lighting up the scientific path toward a long-sought new medical imaging agent to better monitor treatment with heparin, the blood thinner that millions of people take to prevent or treat blood clots. Bruce Branchini and colleagues combined a protein obtained from firefly luciferase with a special dye that allows the protein to emit near-infrared light. In laboratory experiments, the new material successfully detected minute amounts of a specific blood protein, called factor Xa, which is used to monitor the effectiveness of heparin treatment.

Bacterial life on and in humans orchestrates health and disease
Chemical & Engineering News

C&EN Associate Editor Sarah Everts notes that the astonishing diversity of microbes inhabiting every inch of the skin and parts of the interior profoundly influences your quality of life — mostly for good — from cradle to grave. Microbes protect people from disease, make essential vitamins, and provide digestive enzymes needed to break down plant fibers for energy. Microbes also may have a say in whether people are skinny or fat and how they smell. In the past three years, scientists have begun several large projects to map the diversity and activities of these microbes in hopes of linking them to health and disease. These and other projects are starting to reveal that every part of the body has its own ecosystem, much like the diversity of landscapes on Earth.

The buzz on fruit flies: New role in the search for addiction treatments
ACS Chemical Neuroscience

Laboratory mice, rats, and monkeys have been mainstays in research with the ultimate goal of finding effective medicines for treating addiction. Although these mammals have helped establish the behavioral effects of cocaine on the body, they provide relatively complicated models to study the effects of cocaine and other illicit drugs on the brain and nerves. In the hope for a new simpler animal model they turned to fruit flies, which have many biological similarities to mammals, but are easier to study. Researchers confirmed those hopes in research that involved giving cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, and methylphenidate to fruit flies and then studying brain chemistry with a microelectrode one-twentieth the diameter of a human hair. The results demonstrate that fruit flies are a valid model for studying drug addiction in humans, the scientists say.

Heart drugs show promise for fighting colon cancer
Journal of Natural Products

Jenny Felth, Joachim Gullbo, and colleagues note that cardiac glycosides, a family of naturally-derived drugs used to treat congestive heart failure and abnormal heart rhythms, show promise for fighting colon cancer. Colon cancer is the third most common cancer in the United States, with more than 150,000 cases diagnosed in the U.S. each year. Despite this, knowledge on effects in colon cancer or combination effects with other anti-cancer drugs is lacking. They selected five heart drugs to test against laboratory cultures of human colon cancer cells and found that they were all effective, to varying degrees, at killing the cancer cells. Several of the drugs showed increased anticancer activity when used alone or combined with certain drugs used for standard chemotherapy.

Carbon nanotubes twice as strong as once thought
ACS Nano

New studies by Stephen Cronin and colleagues on the strength of carbon nanotubes indicate that on an ounce-for-ounce basis they are at least 117 times stronger than steel and 30 times stronger than Kevlar, the material used in bulletproof vests and other products. The nanotubes could also be stretched up to 14 percent of their normal length without breaking, or more than twice that of previous reports by others. This establishes “a new lower limit for the ultimate strength of carbon nanotubes,” which could expand the commercial and industrial applications of nanotube materials.

Behind-the-scenes advances underpin new super-strong plastics
Chemical & Engineering News

C&EN Senior Editor Alexander Tullo notes that certain catalysts, called “metallocenes,” engendered excitement years ago because they allowed production of stronger forms of polyethylene plastics. These upgraded forms of polyethylene have led to availability of stronger, more durable consumer products ranging from garbage bags to camping cookware. However, hopes that metallocene plastics would replace conventional polyethylene plastics faded because of the high costs of these catalysts. A revival in the use of metallocenes and expanded marketing of super-strong polyethylene plastics has resulted from technological advances that have cut the catalysts’ cost and fostered production of millions of tons of the new plastics.

Small particles show big promise in beating unpleasant odors
Langmuir

A deodorant made from nanoparticles — hundreds of times smaller than peach fuzz — eliminates odors up to twice as effectively as today’s gold standard. Brij Moudgil and colleagues note that consumers use a wide range of materials to battle undesirable odors in clothing, on pets, in rooms, and elsewhere. Tests of the particles against ethyl mercaptan, the stuff that gives natural gas its unpleasant odor, showed that nanoparticles were up to twice as effective as the gold standard — activated carbon — at removing the material’s foul-smelling odor. In addition to fighting odors, the particles also show promise for removing sulfur contaminants found in crude oil and for fighting harmful bacteria.