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Pasteur and Chirality (Or Handedness)

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楼主
发表于 6-21-2017 16:08:49 | 只看该作者 回帖奖励 |倒序浏览 |阅读模式
Joanna Klein, How Pasteur's Artistic Insight Changed Chemistry; Before Developing pasteurization and a number of vaccines, the 19th-century scientist saw the mechanics of molecular mirror images. New York Times, June 20, 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/ ... lity-chemistry.html

Note:
(a)
(i) You need not be a scientist to understand this posting.
(ii) The top photo online (which also is in print) shows tartrate crystals shone with polarized light.

(b) "In a paper published last month in Nature Chemistry, Dr Joseph Gal[, 'a chemist and professor emeritus at the University of Colorado'] explains how a young Pasteur * * * articulate[d] * * *chirality * * * Pasteur was born in 1822 to a French family of modest means. His dad was a soldier in Napoleon’s army and a tanner. As a teenager, Pasteur made portraits of his friends, family and dignitaries. But after his father urged him to pursue a more serious profession — one that would feed him — he became a scientist. At the age of 24 he discovered chirality."

The paper is locked behind paywall: Joseph Gal, Pasteur and the art of chirality. Nature Chemistry, _: _ (online publication May 29, 2017).
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沙发
 楼主| 发表于 6-21-2017 16:13:01 | 只看该作者
(c) "During winemaking, a chemical called tartaric acid builds up on vat walls.
(i) tartar (n; etymology):
"1: a hard calcified deposit that forms on the teeth and contributes to their decay
1.1 : a deposit of impure potassium hydrogen tartrate formed during the fermentation of wine"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/tartar
(A) The same online dictionary indicates "tartaric" is the cognate adjective with the above noun.
(B) A salt of tartaric acid is spelled "tartrate."  However, tartaric acid has two carboxyl groups (see (d)(iii) below for chemical structure), one carboxyl group at each end; each carboxyl group can lose its hydrogen ion. So one has to specify the tartrate at issue is a monoanion or dianion (losing one or two hydrogen ions, respectively).
(ii) Search images.google.com with (tartaric acid crystal) and you will know what it looks like. The crystals look red, because they come out of grape wines, with impurities. In pure form the crystals (whether right, left or racemic) look white with naked eyes.
(iii) the source of tartaric acid in the wine is not from fermentation (by the yeast). See Understanding Wine Tartrates. Jordan Winery, undated.
https://www.jordanwinery.com/fil ... e_Tartrates_FAQ.pdf

Quote:

"potassium and tartaric acid, both naturally occurring products of grapes, bind together to form a crystal. Tartrates are scientifically known as potassium bitartrate

"All wine contains naturally occurring organic acids (malic and tartaric acids being the primary ones). Malic acid— 'malum' is Latin [noun neuer] for 'apple'—can almost entirely be converted to the weaker acid, lactic, through a bacterial fermentation. Tartaric is the primary acid we taste in all wines

(A) potassium bitartrate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_bitartrate
(also known as potassium hydrogen tartrate [ie, this tartrate is a monoanion] )
(B) malolactic fermentation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malolactic_fermentation
("Chemically, malolactic fermentation is a decarboxylation, which means carbon dioxide is liberated in the process")

Check chemical structures of both malic acid and lactic acid, and you will understand.
(iv) "Grapes are unusual in that they produce large quantities of tartaric acid, whereas most fruits produce citric acid."
Separating Enantiomers. Kshitij Education; India's No 1 online academy, undated.
http://www.kshitij-iitjee.com/Separating-Enantiomers
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板凳
 楼主| 发表于 6-21-2017 16:17:24 | 只看该作者
(d) "In 1819, factory workers boiled wine too long and accidentally produced paratartaric acid, which had unique properties that intrigued scientists like Pasteur."
(i) paratartaric acid: "an old name for racemic dl‐tartaric acid. The resolution of this acid into the d‐ and l‐enantiomers by Pasteur was a landmark experiment in stereochemistry. See tartaric acid"
Oxford Reference, undated
http://www.oxfordreference.com/v ... y.20110803100305857

For definition of "racemic," see (d)(ii)(B) below.
(ii) The reporter fails to point out the significance of this sentence. See (e) also.
(A) In nature, almost all amino acids (which may be building blocks of protein) are left-handed, whereas sugars humans can absorb are right-handed.
(B) The (natural) tartaric acid in grapes (and wines) are right handed. Yet heating of wine in a right condition can change half of right-handed tartaric acid to the left handed one, creating a
racemic mixture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racemic_mixture
(section 1 etymology: from Latin [noun masculine] racemus, meaning a bunch of grapes)
(iii) tartaric acid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartaric_acid
("is a white crystalline organic acid that occurs naturally in many plants, most notably in grapes. Its salt, potassium bitartrate * * * develops naturally in the process of winemaking" / note chemical structure; a sketch whose caption reads: "Tartaric acid crystals drawn as if seen through an optical microscope" )
(A) This Wiki page tells you that heating right-handed tartaric acid in a different way can produce "mesotartaric acid":  "Whereas the two chiral stereoisomers rotate plane polarized light in opposite directions, solutions of meso-tartaric acid do not rotate plane-polarized light. The absence of optical activity is due to a mirror plane in the molecule [segmented line in picture below]. * * * Meso-tartaric acid is formed via thermal isomerization. Dextro-tartaric acid is heated in water at 165 °C for about 2 days. * * * Meso-tartaric acid can be separated from residual racemic acid by crystallization, the racemate being less soluble."  (brackets original)
(B) meso compound
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meso_compound
(C) meso- (combining form; from Greek mesos middle): "middle; intermediate"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/meso-
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4#
 楼主| 发表于 6-21-2017 16:21:28 | 只看该作者
(e) "Earlier in the 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Biot, a French physicist, discovered that [natural] tartaric acid was optically active. That is, when Biot shined polarized light (which moves out in only one direction, say vertically or horizontally, rather than [in] all directions[, as in natural light]) through tartaric acid crystals in a solution, they rotated the light clockwise or counterclockwise. But no one knew how the crystals did it.  When studying the paratartaric acid [in the overheated wine; see (d) above], Pasteur found that it produced two kinds of crystals — one like those found in tartaric acid and another that was the mirror opposite. The crystals were handed, or what the Greeks call chiral (kheir [which is Greek spelling]) for hand. And they were not optically active, like the [natural] tartaric acid.  Pasteur concluded that the mirror-image crystals, together as a 50/50 mix in the solution, canceled out each other's ability to rotate polarized light. And without even knowing how a molecule was built, just eight months after receiving his doctorate, he said that their molecular structure was chiral, too. Chemistry changed forever."
(i) Joseph M Hornback, Organic Chemistry. 2nd ed. Brooks/Cole, 2005, at page 238
https://books.google.com/books?i ... tweezer&f=false
("The first experiments of importance to this area were reported in 1915 by the French physicist  JB Biot, who discovered that certain organic compounds, such as turpentine, sugar camphor, and tartaric acid, were optically active: that is, solutions of these compounds rotated the plane of polarization of plane-polarized light. Of course, the chemists of this period had no idea of what caused a compound to be optically active because atomic theory was just being developed and the concepts of valence and stereochemistry would not be discovered until far in the future.  The next major contribution was made in 1848 by the great scientist Louis Pasteur. During the fermentation of wine, large quantities of (+)-tartaric acid precipitate in the barrels. Pasteur was studying a salt of this acid when he discovered that it has a very interesting property[: chirality] * * * Using a tweezer and a magnifying glass [some say a microscope] (and considerable patience), Pasteur was able to separate these crystals of [paratartrate]. He found one [pile] to be completely identical to the salt of (+)-tartaric acid that he had studied previously. The other had  identical physical and chemical properties except that it rotated plane-polarized light in the opposite direction. Pasteur had accomplished the first resolution of a racemic organic compound!")
(ii) Peter J Ramberg, Chemical Structure, Spatial Arrangement; The early history of stereochemistry, 1874–1914. Routledge, 2017, page number not shown
https://books.google.com/books?i ... larized&f=false
("The most important of these salts for our purposes were the sodium-ammonium salts of tartaric and paratartaric acid. * * * In 1844, the German chemist Elihard Mitscherlich had noticed that these two salts [sodium-ammonium salts of tartaric and paratartaric acid] exhibited identical external crystalline forms. In fact, the two ammonium sodium salts were virtually identical except for their behavior towards polarized light. A solution of tartrate rotated polarized light, while a solution of the paratartrate had no effect. This proved puzzling, because the influence on polarized light was not reflected a difference in crystal forms. * * * he [Pasteur] perceived a crucial difference, overlooked by Mitscherlich, in the crystals of the sodium-ammonium tartrate and paratartrate. The crystals of tartrate and paratrate, Pasteur noticed, were hemihedral and asymmetric crystals that were non-superimposable mirror images of one another")
(iii) hemihedral?
(A) -hedral (adjective combining form): "having (such) a surface or (such or so many) surfaces"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/-hedral
(B) Laurence D Barron, Molecular Light Scattering and Optical Activity. Cambridge University Press, 2004, at page 26
https://books.google.com/books?i ... ohedral&f=false
("Direct evidence that the structure of optically active materials is in some way chiral followed from the observation by Hauy in 1801 that the apparent hexagonal symmetry of quartz crystals was in fact reduced by the presence of small facets on alternate corners of the crystal. These hemihedral facets destroy the centre and planes of symmetry of the basic holohedral hexagonal crystal * * * as in Fig 1.11. The two forms of quartz which Biot had found to provide opposite senses of optic rotation were subsequently identified by Herschel (1822) as the two hemihedral forms of quartz. * * * Pasteur extends the concept of chirality from the realm of the structure of optically active crystals [quartz] to that of the individual molecules which provide optically fluid or solutions. He worked with tartaric acid * * * The crystal forms of tartaric acid and most of its salts are hemihedral, whereas those of paratartaric acid and most of its salts are holohedral")
* It is critical that one views Fig 1.11.
* Krešimir Molčanov and Vladimir Stilinović, Chemical Crystallography before X-ray Diffraction. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 53: 638-652 (2014)
https://www.researchgate.net/fig ... levorotatory-sodium
("Figure 7: Crystals of a) dextrorotatory sodium ammonium tartrate, b) levorotatory sodium ammonium tartrate, and c) optically inactive sodium ammonium racemate. While (a) and (b) are hemihedral and enantiomorphic to each other, (c) is holohedral)

The importance is that crystals of paratartrate do not have hemihedral facet, though the overall shape of crystals (of hemihedral and holohedral crystals) are dissimilar.
(C) Robert Glaser, Symmetry, Spectroscopy, and Crystallography; The structural nexus. Wiley, 2015, at pages50- 51
https://books.google.com/books?i ... ography&f=false
("Pasteur observed that one of the crystal facets was longer (hemihedral face h) than the others. This gave the sodium ammonium (+)-tartrate and paratartrate crystals an asymmetric appearance (like those of quartz) since the h-hemihedral faces (see left-handed 56 and right-handed 57). Moreover, he noted a correlation between the right-hand disposition of the elongated face and the maintenance of this asymmetry when the (+)-tartrate double salt crystals were dissolved to afford a dextrorotatory solution")

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5#
 楼主| 发表于 6-21-2017 16:25:00 | 只看该作者
(f) The following is plain-spoken and easy to comprehend.
(i) Chirality and Optical Activity. Purdue University, undated.
chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/topicreview/bp/1organic/chirality.html

Quote:

"Those that rotate the plane clockwise (to the right) are said to be dextrorotatory (from the Latin dexter, 'right'). Those that rotate the plane counterclockwise (to the left) are called levorotatory (from the Latin laevus, 'left') * * * the Latin terms for left (sinister) and right (rectus).

"It is important to recognize that the (R)/(S) system is based on the structure of an individual molecule and the (+)/(-) system is based on the macroscopic [effect on polarized light] behavior of a large collection of molecules. The most complete description of an enantiomer combines aspects of both systems. * * * Note that the sign of the optical rotation is not correlated to the absolute configuration.
(ii)
(A) English dictionary:
* sinister (adj; 'Is sinister unfair to the left-handed?': in Latin: sinister (on the left side) and dexter (on the right side) )
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sinister

Both "sinister" and "dexter" are adjectives masculine.
(B) Latin-English dictionary:
* laevus (adjective masculine): "left; on the left side"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/laevus
* rēctus (masculine; perfect passive participle of verb regō I rule):
"1: ruled * * * governed * * *
3: straight
4: right"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rectus
   ^ rectum
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectum
      (from the Latin rectum intestinum, meaning straight intestine 直腸)
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6#
 楼主| 发表于 6-21-2017 16:28:08 | 只看该作者
(g) "We now know that many drugs contain molecules that exist in two chiral forms, and that the two forms can react differently in the body. The most tragic example occurred in the 1950s and '60s, when doctors prescribed Thalidomide, a drug for morning sickness and other ailments, to pregnant women. The drug also contained a chiral molecule that caused disastrous side effects in many babies.  Today, pharmaceutical companies work harder to separate the active and inactive forms of molecules, and the Food and Drug Administration issued rules to crack down on many chiral drugs in the 1990s. But not all are dangerous, and some were grandfathered in. For example, the pain reliever ibuprofen, as formulated in the United States, contains a 50/50 mix of chiral molecules: one that reduces headaches and its mirror image, which does not appear to be harmful."
(i)
(A) Why Thalidomide Is Important to Chiral Separation. Averica, Sept 12, 2014.
http://www.avericadiscovery.com/ ... -chiral-separation/

enantiomer (n; from Greek enantios opposite + [English] -mer): "each of a pair of molecules that are mirror images of each other"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/enantiomer
(B) "The precise mechanism of action for thalidomide is unknown," en.wikipedia.org, for both its therapeutic and teratogenic effects.
(C) Guo-Qiang Lin, Qi-Dong You, Jie-Fei Cheng (eds), Chiral Drugs; Chemistry and biological action. Wiley, 2011, at page 4
https://books.google.com/books?i ... idomide&f=false
(thalidomide: "It was argued that if one of the enantiomers had been used instead of the racemic, the birth defects could have been avoided as the S isomer caused teratogenesis and induced fatal malformations or deaths in rodents while the R isomer exhibited the desired analgetic properties without side effects [3]. Subsequent tests with rabbits proved that both enantiomers have desirable and undesirable activities and the chiral center is easily racemized in vivo [4]. Recent identification of thalidomide's target solved the long-standing controversies [5]. The chirality story about thalidomide, although not true, has indeed had great impact on modern chiral drug discovery and development")  

, where footnote 5 is:
Ito T et al, Identification of a primary target of thalidomide teratogenicity. Science 327: 1345-1350 (2010).
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/327/5971/1345.long
(ii)
(A) "Ibuprofen is produced industrially as a racemate."  en.wikipedia.org
(B) Take notice that the (R)-(-)-ibuprofen is not completely devoid of bioactivity, and besides, a high percentage of it is converted in human body to (S)-(+)-ibuprofen )which is the same as S (dextrorotatory).

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