Pesticides as poisons

Pesticides and Birds: From DDT to Today’s Poisons

JOURNAL OF PESTICIDE REFORM / WINTER 1991 / VOL. 11, NO. 4 Caroline Cox is JPR’s editor. pearance of peregrine falcons (see article beginning on p.), bald and golden eagles, ospreys, kestrels, and other predatory birds were recorded. DDT’s history certainly paints a frightening picture. But what about the many other pesticides in use today? How do they impact birds? This article is a brief over...

Fragments of the Bacterial Toxin Microcin B17 as Gyrase Poisons

Fluoroquinolones are very important drugs in the clinical antibacterial arsenal; their success is principally due to their mode of action: the stabilisation of a gyrase-DNA intermediate (the cleavage complex), which triggers a chain of events leading to cell death. Microcin B17 (MccB17) is a modified peptide bacterial toxin that acts by a similar mode of action, but is unfortunately unsuitable ...

Two new flavonol glycosides as DNA topoisomerase I poisons.

Flavonoids are secondary plant metabolites whose anticancer properties are actually being studied from an epidemiological and pharmacological point of view. They are believed to be implicated in the lower risk of some forms of cancer observed in Asian countries, due to their capacity to control cell proliferation, to act on certain regulatory enzymes as protein kinases or topoisomerases. Based ...

Cyclometalated platinum(II) complexes as topoisomerase IIα poisons.

A platinum(II)-based major groove binder [Pt(II)(C^N)(C≡NR)(2)](+) (HC^N = 2-phenylpyridine (phpy), R = 2-naphthyl) was identified as a potent human topoisomerase IIα poison. It stabilizes the covalent TopoIIα-DNA cleavage complex and induces cancer cell death with potency significantly higher than the widely clinically used TopoIIα poison Vp-16.

Cholera and Fever Poisons