Those Wacky Californians

[brynndragon]

I just wanted to share this, from lab_gripes:



The one on the left is the login for the UCSD chem department mail server, the one on the right is the chemical structure of Ecstasy. Coincidence? I think not! :)

Comments

[motomuffin.livejournal.com]

But the login is a trans isomer and the molecule on the right is a cis isomer... doesn't that make them at least a little bit different? You know, enough for plausible deniability? ;)

[motomuffin.livejournal.com]

Ha!

You could have just said "No." Smarty-pants.

;)

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

They both look like bug-eyed lizards with an asymmetrical tail...

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I was pretty sure that particular bond was free to move (being a single bond and all). Except that it's not the side-to-side motility that's at issue, but whether that part of the molecule is above or below the page (in 3D terms). Dammit, there's a perfectly good convention for drawing 3Dness of structures, why don't people use it? *grumbles about getting a similar question wrong on her biochem problem set*

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

But the one on the UCSD logo is backwards! Doesn't that mean it would make you sad, instead?

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

Chemical formulae are not like mouths! ;P

Actually, wouldn't the opposite of E be "incapable of sensing the outside world"? Oh, wait, that's REM sleep. (in fact, one of the hallmarks of REM sleep is a significant decrease in dopamine running around in your brain (and an acompanying increase in acetylcholine, which could explain why REM sleep is important for learning and memory formation although the link betwen ACh and memory/learning is tenuous at best), so that even makes sense since E is known to cause an increase in dopamine activity).

[roamin-umpire.livejournal.com]

Rather than worry about orientation (and you're right, it should be free to rotate about that bond), I'm more interested in the excess circles on the "tail." If each one indicates an oxygen, then it's a different molecule altogether.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

They're not necessarily oxygen, since there's a nitrogen that corresponds to one of the circles in the tail. Which doesn't mean you're not correct ;P. Let me see what homologues there are for ecstasy. . . I didn't manage to find any that precisely match the structure implied by the UCSD login molecule. I found one that was close, with another nitrogen at one end, but the other end just had a methyl group, and it only seems to have been tested in dishes as potential cancer treatments. Sadly my chemical naming ability has deteriorated, or else I'd just try plugging in the potential chemical names into PubChem.

[null4096.livejournal.com]

In favor of it being Ecstasy:
It's a 'naughty' chemical, consistent with graduate students' sense of humor.
It doesn't look like cocaine, heroin, or marijuana (all of which have considerably more complicated ring structures).
It's unlikely the circles represent only oxygen. You've got what appears to be two oxygens attached to each other in that case, which is not a formula for stability; that's what appears to be a peroxyacid, (two bonds from carbon to O, one to the pair of O's, one to the rest of the molecule) which is usually used as an oxidizing agent.

Against:
Even if the circles didn't necessarily represent O, they seem to be using at least two of them to represent methyl groups, which doesn't make much sense.

But, guess what? PubChem has a structure search, and if you plug in that molecule with the circles standing in for O's, you get no hits! (I tried making the real Ecstasy on the structure browser and plugged it in; yup, it turns up Ecstasy.)

Personally I think it is Ecstasy and they switched a few of the atoms around so nobody could accuse them of promoting drugs on a university website.

For the record, it is metabolized by (among other enzymes) cytochrome CYP2D6. I hope you can come up with a gaming joke out of this.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, do I know you?

(and yes, I agree with your assessment that it's ecstasy with some extra dots thrown in for CYA purposes)

[127fascination.livejournal.com]

I friended you, if thats OK. Loved your comment in NFP about pattern recognition. Glad to see another scientist with similar interests :)

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

That's not a problem at all. It is indeed good to know folks who sit in the intersection of scientist and pagan, there aren't a whole lot of us. What field are you in, if you don't mind my asking?

[127fascination.livejournal.com]

"What field are you in, if you don't mind my asking?"

Second generation protein drugs out here in the Biotech Bay. Great place for both science and paganism. Thus I am one of those wacky Californians (Northern Cal).