Marker, Russell

RUSSELL G (2001) Introduction bone metabolism and its regulation. / . Eastell, R, Baumann, M, Hoyle, N R, Wieczorek, L Bone Markers Biochemical and Clinical Perspectives, London, Martin Dunitz Ltd, 1-26. 

The test marker strain (T) developed by Russell uses seven recessive loci a (nonagouti), b (brown), cch (chinchilla), d (dilute), p (pink-eyed dilution), 5 (piebald) and se (short-ear). As for the mouse spot test, these genes control coat pigmentation, intensity or pattern, and, for the se gene, the size of the external ear. 

Saari, S. K., Campbell, C. D., Russell, J., Alexander, I. J., and Anderson, I. C. (2005). Pine microsatellite markers allow roots and ectomycorrhizas to be linked to individual trees. New Phyt. 165,295-304. 

The most viable method for obtaining larger amounts of steroid hormones is to start with some readily available natural product with a structure that is similar to a steroid and convert it to the desired compound. Russell Marker, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, developed such a method to prepare progesterone from diosgenin, a material that is readily available from Mexican yams. His synthesis is outlined in Figure 28.9. However, he could not interest a major pharmaceutical company in his process, so in 1944 he founded his own company, Syntex, in Mexico City to develop it. 

C8. Colwell, A., Russell, R. G., and Eastell, R., Factors affecting the assay of urinary 3-hydroxy pyridinium crosslinks of collagen as markers of bone resorption. Eur. J. Clin. Invest. 23, 341-349 (1993). 

D. H. Russell and B. G. M. Durie, Polyamines as Biochemical Markers of Normal and Malignant Growth. Raven Press, New York, 1978. 

Manner M. S., Gehrz R. D., Marker D. E., Hayward T. L., Lynch D. K., Mason C. C., Russell R. W., Williams D. M., Wooden D. H., and Woodward C. E. (1997) Thermal emission from the dust coma of Comet Hale-Bopp and the composition of the silicate grains. Earth Moon Planets 79, 247-264. 

Syntex was established in Mexico City in 1944 by two refugee scientists— a Hungarian and a German—in association with a chemist from Pennsylvania State University named Russell B. Marker, who had discovered a way to produce steroid hormones from the roots of a vine growing wild in Mexico. The company began selling extremely rare sex hormones in bulk to pharmaceutical firms. At this time the major innovator in this new field of anabolic steroids (male hormones) was an old-line pharmaceutical firm, Searle. ... 

These branched acids can be source-specific and they are rarely unsaturated. They are formed by the incorporation of branched amino acids into the biosynthetic pathway, yielding iso and anteiso acids, as noted in Section 5.1.3. Iso and anteiso saturated fatty acids are found in fungi, molluscs and phytoplankton, but they are generally in higher levels in bacteria and are often observed in the C13—C17 range (Harwood Russell 1984).The C15 isomers (Fig. 5.1) are usually particularly abundant in bacteria and the ratio (iso + anteiso)/normal derived from C15 components can be used as an indication of relative bacterial contributions (Parkes Taylor 1983). Similarly, the (08 isomers of /. >- 5 1 and iso-17 1 are bacterial markers (Perry et al. 1979), and iso-17 1(07 is characteristically a major fatty acid in the sulphate-reducing bacteria Desulfovibrio desulfuricans (Taylor Parkes 1983). 

The chemist Russel Marker conducted an intense search in the 1940s in Mexico for a steroidal natural product that could be used to prepare some of the hormonal steroids. His research soon centered on the Mexican wild yam Dioscorea villosa as a potential source of those compounds. Treating the saponin dioscin (7-1) with mild acid, he found, gave the aglycone diosgenin (7-2) (Scheme 2.7). 

The limitation of human population growth is among the greatest challenges of our time. To cope with this question, we do not lack the necessary technical means, and natural product chemistry has an important part in this Starting from an extract of yam root, the American chemist Russell Marker created the chemical basis for the development of hormonal contraceptives. Diosgenin was the starting material for the preparation of the first semi-synthetic steroid hormones (cf. Section 6.1). 

It was perfectly clear to Russell Marker, that the future demand for steroid hormones could not be satisfied on the basis of buU s urine. By the end of the 1930s, he had already found a way of preparing progesterone also from various sapogenins (Fig. 6.12). 

In November 1941, Russell E. Marker found the starting material for the partial synthesis of progesterone in yam roots. 

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