Sulfur mustard glutamic acid

The use of sulfur mustard as a vesicant CW agent implies that proteins of the skin are a primary target. It was found that upon exposure of human callus to [14C]sulfur mustard, a significant part of the radioactivity was covalently bound to keratin (30). Most of the radioactivity (80%) bound to keratin could be removed by treatment with alkali, indicating the presence of adducts to glutamic and/or aspartic acid residues. 

Following two simultaneous cases of accidental human exposure to sulfur mustard, Smith et al. (2008) investigated the concentration of the cysteine-34 adduct to albumin and adducts to glutamic and aspartic acids of plasma proteins. In the case of a more severely exposed patient who required hospitalization, both adducts were detected over a 42 day period, though decreasing by approximately 75% towards... 

Initial efforts by Noort et al. (1996,1997) to detect protein adducts of sulfur mustard focused on the 4-(2-hydrox-yethylthioethyl)-L-aspartate, 5-(2-hydroxyethylthioethyl)L-glutamate, the cysteine and the N-terminal valine adduct and two histidine adducts, Nl- and N3-(2-hydroxyethylth-ioethyl)-L-histidine, respectively. Acidic hydrolysis and pronase digestion were used to release these adducts from... 

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