Atelopus chiriquiensis

Currently we know very little about naturally occurring tetrodotoxin analogs or precursors. Chiriquitoxin, isolated along with tetrodotoxin from the Costa Rican frog Atelopus chiriquiensis (21,22), is known to possess the same basic skeleton as tetrodotoxin but differs by an uncharacterized substituent at C-6, as shown in the structure below. It also was shown, based on isolation experiments, that... 

Animal tissues have yielded several carotenoids of previously unknown structure. Chiriquixanthins A and B from a yellow frog, Atelopus chiriquiensis, have been found to be epimeric e,e-carotene-3,3 -diols (18) and (19) differing... 

Chiriquitoxin is the major guanidinium toxin of the bufonid frog Atelopus chiriquiensis (202,203,211). Structure XXVI has been elucidated by analysis of the nuclear magnetic resonance spectra of chiriquitoxin and its... 

Chiriquitoxin has been reported only from the skin of one species, Atelopus chiriquiensis, where it occurs with tetrodotoxin in a ratio of 7 parts chiriquitoxin to 3 parts tetrodotoxin (202). Both toxins also occur in eggs (203). Further studies will be required to determine whether this unusual congener of tetrodotoxin occurs elsewhere in Nature. 

Yotsu, M., Yasumoto, T., Kim, Y.H., Naoki, H., and Kao, C.Y. 1990b. The structure of chiriquitoxin from the Costa Rican frog Atelopus chiriquiensis. Tetrahedron Lett. 31, 3187-3190. 

Bingham, A., H. S. Mosher, and A. G. Andrewes Epimeric 3,3 -dihydroxy-e,8-carotene from the skin of the yellow Costa Rican frog, Atelopus chiriquiensis. Chem. Commun. 1977,96. 

Also isol. from the skin of Atelopus chiriquiensis. 

A frog occurring in Costa Rica, Atelopus chiriquiensis, contains a mixture of tetrodotoxin and chiriquitoxin (Kim, Brown, and Mosher, 1975 Yotsu et al., 1990). 

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