Biebsanin — A new susquiterpene lactone fromAchillea biebersteinii andA. santolina
Continuing a study of the lactones of Achillea biebersteinii [i] and A. santolina, from the mother liquors [2, 3] by means of the systems chloroform-ethanol (30:1) and benzene--ethyl acetate (1:1) we have isolated a new chlorine-containing sesquiterpene lactone with the composition C15HzgO~CI (ethyl acetate), mp 258-259°C (in a preheated metal block), [u]~ ° --34 ° (c 1.0; pyridine), M + 330, which we have called biebsanin (I).
Rupicolin-A and -B, rupin-A and -B, and cumambrin-B oxide from Artemisia tripartita ssp. Rupicola
Abstract Five new sesquiterpene Iactones have been isolated from Artemisia tripartita Rydb. ssp. rupicola Beetle. The compounds, all guaianolides, are structurally related in what appears to be a sequence in which epoxidation plays the principal role.
New method for analysis of enzymatic reactions: Thermolysin-catalyzed synthesis of aspartame precursor
Aspartame is an artificial sweetener which is 200 times sweeter than sucrose. A precursor of aspartame, N-(benzyloxycarbonyl)-l-aspartyl-l-phenylalanine methyl ester (Z-APM) was synthesized and hydrolyzed with thermolysin in an aqueous monophasic system. Graphical plotting methods and/or nonlinear regression have been used to analyze enzymatic reactions because of the nonlinearity of enzymatic rate equations. There are, however, problems: the former require accurate measurement of the initial reaction rate and the latter gives no analytical information. The authors proposed a method to solve the nonlinear enzymatic rate equations with respect to the concentration of a product with the Taylor expansion, especially for the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism (Murakami, Y., Hirata, M., and Hirata, A., J. Ferment. Bioeng., 82, 246–252, 1996). This solution, however, is complex for practical use. In this paper, a simpler solution to explain the thermolysin-catalyzed synthesis of Z-APM is obtained. New methods to determine the kinetic parameters, especially for the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism, based on the approximated solution are proposed. The results calculated using the obtained kinetic parameters can satisfactorily explain the experimental results, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed analysis. We must know the relation between the concentrations of substrates and a product, and accurately evaluate of the result obtained using Taylor expansion when we determine the kinetic parameters using our newly developed methods. The methods to determine the kinetic parameters of the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism described in this paper is, however, expected to be applied to general enzymatic reactions.