3 ms·
That's interesting. How can they bioaccumulate if they are both hydrophobic and hydrophilic?
by Iv 10y ago
That's interesting. How can they bioaccumulate if they are both hydrophobic and hydrophilic?
- akiselev 10y agoThis is what makes PFA molecules so potentially dangerous: they don't behave like anything we've seen in natural biochemistry. Since they have both a hydrophobic carbon chain and a hydrophilic functional group containing fluorine, no known protein can break them down and no known biomechanical mechanism can filter them out so they remain in the blood indefinitely. At the same time, however, the carbon chain and functional group are free to bind onto other proteins as long as the molecules are oriented in the right way, which invariably prevents the other protein from functioning correctly.
- im4w1l 10y agoIf the natural ways of removing toxins don't work... could it be done artificially? Engineer some kind of enzyme to break them down? Dialysis?
- akiselev 10y agoMaybe, but not for a very long time. You'd have to develop an otherwise inert enzyme that can go through cell membranes and spread to every cell in the body. Theoretically this would be feasible using a retro virus that can infect every cell and instruct it to produce the enzyme but we're basically just getting our feet wet with genetic engineering research that is bound to take decades or centuries to get to that point. Dialysis wouldn't do a thing since most of the toxic molecules arent going to be in the blood plasma.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]