Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 317, Issue 5835, Pages 225-227Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1144314
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- NIGMS NIH HHS [GM046502] Funding Source: Medline
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The extreme toxicity of organomercury compounds that are found in the environment has focused attention on the mechanisms of action of bacterial remediating enzymes. We describe facile room-temperature protolytic cleavage by a thiol of the Hg-C bond in mercury-alkyl compounds that emulate the structure and function of the organomercurial lyase MerB. Specifically, the tris( 2-mercapto-1-t-butylimidazolyl) hydroborato ligand [Tm-But], which features three sulfur donors, has been used to synthesize [Tm-But] HgR alkyl compounds (R = methyl or ethyl) that react with phenylthiol (PhSH) to yield [Tm-But] HgSPh and RH. Although [Tm-But] HgR compounds exist as linear two-coordinate complexes in the solid state, H-1 nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy indicates that the complexes exist in rapid equilibrium with their higher-coordinate [kappa(2)-Tm-But] HgR and [kappa(3)-Tm-But] HgR isomers in solution. Facile access to a higher-coordinate species is proposed to account for the exceptional reactivity of [ TmBut] HgR relative to that of other two-coordinate mercury-alkyl compounds.
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