in the present study, aqueous solutions of some copper-complexing ligands were screened for their cytotoxicity using brine shrimp lethality test. among the ligands tested, diacetyl-bis(n4-methylthiosemicarbazones) (atsm) proved to be the most safe and non-toxic compound (2% lethality at 10 ppm), while pyruvaldehyde bis(n4-methyl)thiosemicarbazone (ptsm) was shown to possess low toxicity (7% let...

Microbial transformation of lapachol, a naturally occurring naphthoquinone, was carried out by Curvularia lunata (NRRL 2178). The fungus brings about oxidative cyclization of the substrate to dehydro-alpha-lapachone, which was isolated and characterized by nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectral analyses; its structure was verified by chemical synthesis. The metabolite is a naturally occur...

Dieckmann-type cyclization reactions have been employed in the synthesis of the alkyl substituted naphthoquinone 11 and the naphthalenes 10 and 12. Various conditions for the benzylic oxidation of these compounds have been investigated with a view towards the synthesis of some naphthalene based natural products.

As a prelude to engineering artificial energy conversion proteins emulating biology, we examine the inclusion of a synthetic naphthoquinone amino acid in a characterized host-guest protein and determine the effects of its quinone and hydroquinone forms on the helix-coil distribution.

New antibiotics, griseusins A and B were isolated from a strain of Streptomyces griseus. Both antibiotics have a 5-hydroxy-1, 4-naphthoquinone chromophore and their molecular formulae were determined to be C22H20O10 and C22H22O10, respectively. The griseusins are active against gram-positive bacteria.