Cylindrospermopsin
chemical compound
Cylindrospermopsin (abbreviated to CYN, or CYL) is a cyanotoxin produced by a variety of freshwater cyanobacteria. CYN is a polycyclic uracil derivative containing guanidino and sulfate groups. It is also zwitterionic, making it highly water soluble. CYN is toxic to liver and kidney tissue and is thought to inhibit protein synthesis and to covalently modify DNA and/or RNA. It is not known whether cylindrospermopsin is a carcinogen, but it appears to have no tumour-initiating activity in mice.
CYN was first discovered after an outbreak of a mystery disease on Palm Island, Queensland, Australia. The outbreak was traced to a bloom of Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii in the local drinking water supply, and the toxin was subsequently identified. Analysis of the toxin led to a proposed chemical structure in 1992, which was revised after synthesis was achieved in 2000. Several analogues of CYN, both toxic and non-toxic, have been isolated or synthesised.
C. raciborskii has been observed mainly in tropical areas, but has also been observed in temperate regions of Australia, North, South America, New Zealand and Europe. The CYN-producing strain of C. raciborskii has not been identified in Europe, but several other European cyanobacteria species are CYN-producing.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cylindrospermopsin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.