Nature's Principle: Use a common defense wellness mechanism for life forms (e. g., from trees to people).
Back in the 1960's we asked the question: Why won't elm bark beetles feed/breed in hickory (Carya) trees?
The answer, we discovered, is juglone, 5-OH, 1, 4 -naphthoquinone. Further using top down systems biology research technologies, including experiments with whole live higher animals, we found that juglone, and related 1, 4 -naphthoquinones accomplish their defensive tasks through specifically reacting with thiol (-SH) groups in proteins in dendritic membranes of chemosensory neurons in the insects. Juglone is so effective in its defense of Carya trees that Mother Nature (MN) uses juglone to protect a whole sizeable family of trees, appropriately named Juglandaceae. If something works, MN uses it. Juglone (see picture of the chemical structure to the left) employs the same reaction with exposed thiol (-SH) proteins in deterring all sorts of aggressors (e. g., invasive plants, nematodes, fungi, bacteria, viruses, various animals).
Juglone, at physiological pH, reacts specifically with (i. e., is reduced by) the free (reduced) thiol (-SH) of cysteine amino acid in the exposed protein(s) in the aggressor organism (e. g., Smaller European Elm Bark Beetle). If available, two such oxidized (devoid of their hydrogen) sulfurs in the exposed protein will join (form) a disulfide (double) bond within the exposed protein. The chemical structures of cysteine and its redox couple, cystine, are shown to the left. The resultant cystine enriched protein is forced to change its conformation (i. e., form and motion); these are the two reversible parameters of proteins which we recognize as life (i. e., phenotype). Thus, phenotype always is the product of the genome as signalled by the environment (e. g., juglone).
Juglone Uses in Preventing, or Inhibiting, Human Carcinogenesis:
Early formalized-medical efforts at chemotherapies of human cancers encountered markedly adverse side effects, and developed resistance in cancer cells to the available chemotherapeutic agents. The early chemicals to be tested as agents may have been taken, rather randomly, off of well-stocked shelves of traditional reagent compounds in the involved research laboratories.
In the last few decades, the previously largely medically conditioned researchers have started to look to the other biology for possible leads to potential anticancer agents (20). Juglone, from plants in especially the Juglandaceae, is a major chemotherapeutic breakthrough in terms of vastly improved medical understanding, and appreciation, of universal mechanistic parameters of cellular carcinogenesis and apoptosis. Although juglone use as a chemotherapeutic agent in humans still may involve significant adverse toxic side effects, the discoveries from at least 40+ years of fundamental systems biology and biophysical research on 1, 4-naphthoquinones in dozens of diverse living entities have provided medical researchers with capabilities to develop more clinically acceptable chemotherapeutic agents against illnesses (e.g. cancers) in humans. Major revealed capabilities in promising chemical agents for maintaining cell wellness include: react specifically with cysteines on cellular proteins; possess certain redox-potential properties; possess significant hydrogen bonding capabilities; and have adequate lipophilic traits.
These crucial agent characteristics, revealed especially by findings from the decades of pioneering experiments by Unifinium scientists, are factual signposts which should guide current leading medical researchers to more clinically acceptable chemotherapeutic agents that prevent and/or inhibit illnesses (e.g. cancers).
