Sucralose (Alkyl halides in my coffee? Sweeeeet.)
18th May 2006
In what seems to be de rigeur for artificial sweeteners, sucralose (Splenda) was discovered by accident, when some careless soul tasted it. From Wikipedia:
Sucralose was discovered in 1976 by scientists from Tate & Lyle, working with researchers at Queen Elizabeth College (now part of King’s College London). It was discovered by Leslie Hough and a young Indian chemist Shashikant Phadnis. The duo were trying to make an insecticide. On a late-summer day, Phadnis was told to test the powder. Phadnis thought that Leslie asked him to taste it; so he did. He found the compound to be ridiculously sweet (the final formula was 600 times sweeter than sugar). They worked with Tate & Lyle for a year before settling down on the final formula. They did not find any use of the compound as an insecticide.
Sucralose is simply a trichlorinated sucrose. Normally alkyl halides (i.e., organochlorines) are a big no-no for people. They’re quite toxic, hard on your liver, and quite possibly mutagenic. Most of them aren’t nearly as polar as sugars, though (all the hydroxyls…), so this makes it presumably “different” enough to be safe.
Since it’s been marketed as a food, it’s passed loads of tests. I’m assuming one of these is the Ames Test. This is a pretty good test for mutagenicity; it tends towards the conservative side (OJ, potatoes, burgers all fail, among other things). This test works with special strains of Salmonella that have copies of the genes that produce histidine that don’t work. A functional copy will occur when one base in DNA is inserted, deleted, or changed (frameshift or point mutation). If you grow these bacteria on media without histidine, they die if they don’t get the mutations that allow them to produce histidine. So, if they grow, your stuff is mutagenic.
It may have been a mistake to do sucralose today; there is actually quite a lot to say and I’m out of time. Oh, well, see you tomorrow.
November 16th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
[…] A sacarina, como muitos outros adoçantes, foi descoberta por acidente. Do artigo da Wikipedia: A doçura da sacarina foi descoberta acidentalmente por Ira Remsen, professor na Johns Hopkins University, associado eo laboratório Remsen. Em 1879, enquanto trabalhava com alcatrão de hulha (tolueno), Remsen descobriu a doçura da sacarina no jantar por não ter lavado completamente as suas mãos, como havia feito Fahlberg durante o lanche. Remsen e Fahlberg publicaram em conjunto a descoberta em 1880 (Fahlberg, C.; Remsen, I. Ãœber die Oxydation des Orthotoluolsulfamids. Chem. Ber. 1879, 12, 469-473). Contudo, em 1884, Fahlberg patenteou a produção em massa da sacarina sem mencionar Remsen. Sobre o assunto, Remsen comentou: “Fahlberg é um canalha. Dá náuseas ouvir meu nome mencionado juntamente com o dele.”. […]