George Pohnert and Thomas Wichard have discovered an amazing new way in which sea-going plants and animals put halogens on really, really unsaturated fatty acids like this arachidonic acid guy down below:

Seeing as how the ocean is filled with salt and sea-going shit, one would expect that from time to time the two would decide to collaborate and make something which can later be extracted from a Purple Turdblossoming sea sponge (or algae, in this case). Pohnert wants to call this new enzyme he speculates to exist in his JACS communication (2006, 128, 7114-7115) hydroperoxide halolyase. Aside from putting chlorides on fatty acids it can also brominate them and makes the algea smell like flowers when you bust them open and spill their little algae guts. Neat-O! But what applications could there be for something that halogenates fatty acids?
What the world needs is a way to make the brominated vegetable oil in Mountain Dew chiral. This could open the market for a whole new cash cow. PATENTING THE ENANTIOMERIC VERSIONS OF THEIR SOFTDRINKS! By god… this could seriously put a damper on the generic soft drink industry profits and yet do wonders for Big Soda; if some of them could fill their pipelines. When was the last time Royal Crown had a big blockbuster? Yeah… 1905.



i find your analysis of this article shallow and pedantic.
further. your chemistry blog is of questionable intent.
still.
i m n ignoramus, btw. LOL ^_^_^_^_
Hrm. I looked up the definition of chiral, and I fail to see how it relates to this. Impossible to superimpose on it’s mirror image? Does that mean generic-proof?
My good man, always use the wikipedia entry for chiral before using a dictionary.
you got spammed already. PWNT
I’m the real admin. you can tell by my medals.
Spammed? Not unless Carnegie Mellon University has such bad funding issues that they’ve been forced into prostitution for Google.ru. What’s more amazing is that people from other universities are finding this site…. like… the first day I posted something about science.
great blog….I find your analysis humorous and insightful.
I can’t believe I spent the whole night reading Chemblog, few things are that fascinating.
Wow. My first post. Such memories!
And with 9 comments!