[Dioxin-l] Single molecule and statistics

[Bill Patterson]

At 04:50 AM 2/17/00 GMT, david bell wrote:

>Hi Bill

>one of the things you do to test how 'fatty' a compound is is to mix it
with 

>water, and octanol- a fatty alcohol. You then measure how much compound
is 

>in the water, and how much in the octanol, and this gives you a measure
of 

>how much the compound prefers fats. For dioxins, I have seen
coefficients of 

>100,000 to 10,000,000 quoted. This underestimates the effect seen in
cells, 

>which are a salty water solution- this would have the effect of driving
even 

>more dioxin into a 'fatty' compartment.

>

>So to answer, dioxin simply prefers to dissolve in cellular lipids (cell 

>membrane, nuclear memrane, ER, etc): it is not specifically bound, so
much 

>as dissolved. The other thing that keeps dioxin in solution is proteins; 

>many proteins have very 'fatty' pockets, and the interior of most
proteins 

>is very 'fatty', and so dioxin associates well with these fatty 

>environments.

>

>The other thing is that dioxin is not attached to these environments; it
is 

>free to diffuse out of the fat at any time.

>

>cheers

>david


Thank you David, I think I've got it now. I guess the reason it ends up
in the fatty tissue is because it is not attached to any specific thing,
that is once it shuts down the Ah receptor. That is where most of the
toxins end up anyway isn't it???

Thanks for clarifying,

Bill in Sedona

<<><<


<bold>Lipophilic

</bold>Capable of dissolving, of being dissolved in, or of absorbing
lipids. 



<center><bold>http://www.kachina.net/~bphata/medprobs.htm</bold>