Hi,
Everyone are looking for the protein target of a small molecule, but is there any possibility that a small molecule target another small molecules?
Thanks a lot in advance!
Zhiyuan
Binding directly is very hard unless they are really reactive (perhaps reactive warheads), since they will have different half-lives, different physico-chemical properties and getting to a cell/tissue where they are both in sufficient concentration to react would be difficult.
free Radicals are mopped up by anti-oxidants for example but such cases would be few and far and charge plays a role, which it may not in most cases.
It's possible, but probably only at fairly high concentrations. For example, I once observed the reversible reaction in water of an oxaborole with ribose. To look for it, you could try comparing the sum of the UV absorbance spectra of each molecule separately to the spectrum of the mixture. If one of the molecules is fluorescent, you could compare the fluorescence emission spectrum and intensity plus and minus the other compound (the inner filter effect could be a complication). NMR can also be used if you implement water peak suppression.
It depends upon the two species, and (as suggested above) the concentration. The main physical property that describes binding ability is the hardness/softness of the acid/base interaction (hard acids like hard bases, and vice versa).
There are dyes that change their optical properties in the presence of metal ions, Na+, Ca2+ for example, showing that such a process is possible.
This thesis includes a review of both extracellular and intracellular magnetite biogenesis (see page 30).
https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:162882&datastreamId=FULL-TEXT.PDF
Thanks for the comment from Rajeev, Adam and Andrew.
I just found both compound A and Compound B adding to cells produce unique effects. So, i guess is it possible for the two small molecule to react.
Best
Zhiyuan
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