Swainsonine characterization

The pronounced and diverse biological activity of (- )-swainsonine (162) stems from its potency as an inhibitor of a-mannosidases, and its consequent ability to alter the course of glycoprotein processing. Mannosidases partially or wholly characterized during, or detected in, recent inhibition studies with the alkaloid include a-D-mannosidases in the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi 145,146) and in various insects 147,148), a murine lysosomal a-mannosidase 149), and a-mannosidases 1 and II from Vigna umbellata (rice beans) 150). The alkaloid was used to differentiate... 

Some methods for the isolation, detection, and characterization of swainso-nine (378) require mention. A novel analytical procedure based on small-scale hquid—hquid extraction of dried plant material, isolation by extraction with a cation-exchange resin, and quantitation by reversed-phase HPLC coupled to atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was devised to ewiluate the distribution of swainsonine in populations of several North American locoweeds of the genus Oxytropis the limit of detection was about 0.001% in dry plant material, which is at the... 

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