Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
Tohoku University

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Structures of N-Hydroxy-Type Tetrodotoxin Analogues and Bicyclic Guanidinium Compounds Found in Toxic Newts (Editor's Choice in“Journal of Natural Products”)

2020.09.11

Tetrodotoxin (TTX), one of the most famous natural toxins, is distributed worldwide in marine and terrestrial metazoans such as pufferfish, snails, newts and frogs. Its complex chemical structure and potent toxicity have been fascinating scientists in various research fields for a long time. Despite the intense interest in TTX, the biosynthesis remains unresolved.
 
Dr. Yuta Kudo, Assistant Professor of Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Dr. Mari Yotsu-Yamashita, Professor of Graduate School of Agricultural Science, and coauthor discovered new natural compounds related to tetrodotoxin from the toxic newt. This work is an interdisciplinary and international collaboration with Dr. Charles T. Hanifin, Associate Professor of Department of Biology, Utah State University, Uintah Basin Campus. The biosynthetic and shunt pathway of TTX in terrestrial organisms were proposed based the structures of new compounds and the series of putative biosynthetic intermediates/shunt products of TTX collected in their previous works. These results may provide an insight into the biosynthetic pathway of TTX.
The article reporting these results published online in “Journal of Natural Products” on September 8, 2020. This article was also selected to be featured in ACS Editors' Choice to be published as open access.
 
 
 
Publication Details
Yuta Kudo, Charles T. Hanifin, Yuichi Kotaki, and Mari Yotsu-Yamashita* (*corresponding author),
 "Structures of N-Hydroxy-Type Tetrodotoxin Analogues and Bicyclic Guanidinium Compounds Found in Toxic Newts",
Journal of Natural Products
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.0c00623
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