Zingerone (The zestiest ketone)
21st July 2006
I’ll admit it - sometimes, when I have no idea what molecule to write up, I’ll look at the American Chemical Society’s Molecule of the Week Page. And sometimes I pick the one with a name that makes me smirk. Enter zingerone:
The name is easily dissected. Zingerone is a natural product from ginger. “Zinger” is ostensibly from the ineffable zest associated with ginger. “-one” is the suffix associated with the functional group known as a ketone.
As the ACS page notes, zingerone shares some common structural characteristics with capsaicin and vanillin:
Thinking like enters into it when a chemist looks at the structure and metabolic pathways leading to chemicals that plants make. The really weird stuff always seems to come from plants. There is a whole subfield of chemistry known as natural products chemistry devoted to studying this stuff. Plants, you see, are distinctly lacking in legs, fangs, claws, and guns, and they have had to make do with some (often strikingly toxic) chemical defenses. You see it in sea life, too, as in the case of fugu’s tetrodotoxin.
Vanillin (and I’d guess the other “vanillinoids”, but I’m not sure), are synthesized from two closely related amino acids, phenylalanine and tyrosine. As naturally occuring amino acids, they are ubiquitous, and find their way into all sorts of structures (since they’re relatively “cheap” to use).
Have a good weekend.