salt form comes up often in conversation and rarely with the context attached. Here we lay out the basics in order, then work through the practical considerations.
Last reviewed on 2025-12-15. Where a claim depends on a specific study, the study is described rather than over-claimed.
Melanotan-2 is frequently confused with afamelanotide, a linear analogue authorised in the European Union for erythropoietic protoporphyria. The two compounds differ in chain length, ring structure and receptor selectivity, so findings for one cannot be transferred directly to the other. Published controlled human data on melanotan-2 remain sparse, and much of what circulates online derives from small studies or unpublished reports. Questions about effect size, dose-response behaviour and long-term safety therefore remain unresolved.
Melanotan-2 is a synthetic cyclic heptapeptide designed as an analogue of alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone. Its sequence incorporates a lactam bridge that constrains the peptide into a ring, which increases resistance to enzymatic breakdown relative to the natural hormone. Researchers at the University of Arizona synthesised the compound in the late 1980s and early 1990s while studying pigmentation pathways. It has never received marketing approval from any national medicines regulator. In the scientific literature it is usually described as a laboratory research reagent rather than a therapeutic product.
The peptide acts as a non-selective agonist at melanocortin receptors, showing affinity for MC1R, MC3R, MC4R and MC5R. Activation of MC1R on melanocytes drives the conversion of tyrosine into melanin and shifts production toward the darker eumelanin form. MC4R signalling in the central nervous system is linked to appetite and energy balance, which helps explain why reduced food intake appeared in early human studies. Effects on MC4R and on vascular tone also account for the erectile responses recorded as unexpected findings in those same trials.
Scientific discussion of Melanotan-2 spans pharmacology, dermatology, and public-health literature. Laboratory studies examine its receptor binding and cellular effects, while clinical reports describe outcomes observed after unregulated use. These two bodies of work differ in rigour and intent. Peer-reviewed trials of the compound as a medicine are limited, so much of the available information comes from case reports and surveillance data. Authors frequently note the gap between experimental findings and real-world use.
Reported observations after unregulated use include shifts in skin pigmentation and, in some accounts, unintended changes to moles and other lesions. Whether these outcomes are causally linked to the compound, and how often they occur, remain open questions because controlled data are scarce. The absence of standardised dosing and verified product purity complicates interpretation. Researchers have called for better surveillance and analytical characterisation of samples obtained outside regulated channels. Conclusions drawn from anecdotal evidence should be treated as provisional.
Melanotan-2 has not received marketing authorisation from major regulatory agencies for any therapeutic indication. Several jurisdictions classify it as a prescription-only medicine or a controlled substance when supplied for human use. Because approved products do not exist, material sold online usually sits outside pharmaceutical supply chains and formal quality oversight. Regulators have issued public notices describing the compound as unapproved. Enforcement varies, and the legal position differs between countries, which complicates any single general statement about its status.
| Property | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Chemical class | Synthetic cyclic heptapeptide | Alpha-MSH analogue with a lactam ring |
| Molecular formula | C50H69N15O9 | Commonly cited value for the neutral peptide |
| Molecular weight | 1024.18 g/mol | Calculated for the free molecule |
| Appearance | White to off-white powder | Typically supplied as a lyophilised solid |
| Solubility | Soluble in water, DMSO and ethanol | Dissolution in pure water is often slow |
Published pharmacokinetic information is limited and comes mainly from small studies rather than registrational trials. Plasma half-life is usually described as short, on the order of tens of minutes, followed by rapid tissue distribution and clearance of the intact peptide. Metabolites and low concentrations of parent compound have been reported in urine, a detail relevant to anti-doping and forensic testing. Whether repeated exposure changes receptor sensitivity or clearance over time remains an open question. Values differ noticeably between analytical assays, so published numbers should be read as approximate rather than definitive.
Melanotan II is a synthetic cyclic heptapeptide with the sequence Ac-Nle-cyclo[Asp-His-D-Phe-Arg-Trp-Lys]-NH2, corresponding to a molecular formula of C50H69N15O9 and a monoisotopic mass near 1024 daltons. It was designed as a structural analogue of alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone, a peptide hormone produced by cleavage of proopiomelanocortin. A lactam bridge between the aspartate and lysine side chains closes the ring, and the C-terminal amide removes a free carboxyl group. Both modifications increase resistance to enzymatic degradation compared with the linear parent hormone. Four substitutions distinguish it from afamelanotide, the linear analogue studied under the name melanotan I.
Routine characterisation relies on reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection near 214 nanometres, using a C18 column and a water-acetonitrile gradient containing trifluoroacetic acid. Electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry confirms the expected molecular mass and can reveal truncated or oxidised by-products that co-elute poorly. Sequence and stereochemistry require additional work, such as peptide mapping or amino acid analysis, because a chromatographic purity figure alone does not distinguish a diastereomer from the target peptide. Independent testing of research-grade material frequently shows measured content below the stated label, so a certificate of analysis is best read together with the method that produced it.
Melanotan-2 is handled in the laboratory as a lyophilised powder that dissolves readily in water, dimethyl sulfoxide and dimethylformamide, with limited solubility in ethanol. Stock solutions prepared in an organic solvent often precipitate when diluted into aqueous buffer, so gradual dilution with mixing is standard practice. The peptide carries a tryptophan residue and a histidine residue, both sensitive to oxidation and to alkaline conditions. Working solutions are therefore kept near neutral to slightly acidic pH, protected from light, and consumed within the same working session whenever that is practical.
Receptor binding at MC1R on melanocytes raises intracellular cyclic AMP and increases expression of tyrosinase and related enzymes. The downstream result is greater synthesis of eumelanin, the dark pigment, without ultraviolet exposure acting as the trigger. The compound is not selective, however, and also engages MC3R, MC4R and MC5R, which are expressed in the central nervous system and elsewhere. That lack of selectivity is the explanation usually offered for effects reported outside pigmentation, including appetite suppression and nausea. Selectivity remains a central theme in comparative studies of related peptides.
Human data remain limited and mostly short-term. Reports describe small trials and observational accounts rather than large controlled studies, so questions about dose-response relationships and long-term effects on melanocytes stay open. Whether repeated exposure alters naevus behaviour is not settled in the published record. Researchers also note that self-administered use outside clinical settings makes actual exposure difficult to quantify. Statements about efficacy and safety should therefore be read as preliminary rather than established.
Melanotan II is a synthetic cyclic heptapeptide that acts as an agonist at melanocortin receptors. It was designed as a structural analogue of alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone, the endogenous peptide involved in pigment production. The analogue carries a lactam bridge that constrains the ring and slows enzymatic breakdown relative to the native hormone. In research literature it appears under several abbreviations, and naming conventions are not fully standardized. Published descriptions usually place it within the broader melanocortin agonist family.
Melanotan-2 appears on the World Anti-Doping Agency prohibited list within the peptide hormone class, and several national regulators treat it as an unapproved prescription substance. Some countries restrict importation or sale for personal use. Because the compound is widely traded as a research chemical, the practical legal picture differs between jurisdictions and shifts over time. Human safety data covering long periods are limited, and whether repeated pigmentation changes carry any lasting risk to melanocytes remains an open question.
Freeze-dried melanotan-2 is normally kept as a desiccated powder at minus twenty degrees Celsius or lower, shielded from light and moisture. Peptides of this size degrade through hydrolysis, oxidation and deamidation, and each pathway accelerates as temperature and water activity rise. Repeated freeze-thaw cycles promote aggregation and loss of material, so aliquoting a stock solution before freezing is standard laboratory practice. Once dissolved, the solution is markedly less stable than the powder. In laboratory work, solutions are generally refrigerated and used within days rather than kept for months.
===== Erection angle ===== Although many erect penises point upwards, it is common and normal for erect penis to curve in any direction. Many penises are curved in right, left, upwards or downwards direction depending upon the tension of the suspensory ligament that holds it in position. The following table shows how common various erection angles are for a standing male, out of a sample of 81 males aged 21 through 67. In the table, zero degrees is pointing straight up against the abdomen, 90 degrees is horizontal and pointing straight forward, while 180 degrees would be pointing straight down to the feet. An upward pointing angle is most common.
=== Third-generation boron delivery agents === As alternatives to BSH and BPA, "third-generation boron delivery agents" are marked by inclusion of a specific chemical tumor-targeting moiety, often borrowed from those established in chemotherapy, linked to a boron-carrying compound. These targeted drug delivery systems are designed to bind the delivery agent to chemical sites found in tumor cells, rather than relying on secondary properties such as hydrophilicity; the use of BPA to target melanomas was an early example. Third-generation agents are also multifunctional, with cancer-targeting and imaging capabilities. Examples of compounds derivativized for BNCT include "peptides, proteins, antibodies, nucleosides, sugars, porphyrins, liposomes and nanoparticles." Nanoparticles conjugated with boron-containing compounds can target tumor-specific receptors and accumulate in cancer cells. One aspect that is being taken advantage of is the increased uptake of glucose in tumors compared to normal cells. This increase in glucose is due to the upregulated anaerobic glycolysis required in tumor cells, allowing for glucose transporters (GLUT) to be targeted by boron compounds to increase selectivity of tumor cells. Monoclonal antibodies are also being engineered to take advantage of antigens that are overexpressed in tumor cells to increase the tumor-normal tissue ratio. The use of engineered antibodies can allow specificity to patients based on their unique antigenic profiles.
=== Chemical properties === Molybdenum is a transition metal with an electronegativity of 2.16 on the Pauling scale. It does not visibly react with oxygen or water at room temperature, but is attacked by halogens and hydrogen peroxide. Weak oxidation of molybdenum starts at 300 °C (572 °F); bulk oxidation occurs at temperatures above 600 °C, resulting in molybdenum trioxide. Like many heavier transition metals, molybdenum shows little inclination to form a cation in aqueous solution, although the Mo3+ cation is known to form under carefully controlled conditions. Gaseous molybdenum consists of the diatomic species Mo2. That molecule is a singlet, with two unpaired electrons in bonding orbitals, in addition to 5 conventional bonds. The result is a sextuple bond.
== Application in biotechnology == In some of the aminoacyl tRNA synthetases, the cavity that holds the amino acid can be mutated and modified to carry unnatural amino acids synthesized in the lab, and to attach them to specific tRNAs. This expands the genetic code, beyond the twenty canonical amino acids found in nature, to include an unnatural amino acid as well. The unnatural amino acid is coded by a nonsense (TAG, TGA, TAA) triplet, a quadruplet codon, or in some cases a redundant rare codon. The organism that expresses the mutant synthetase can then be genetically programmed to incorporate the unnatural amino acid into any desired position in any protein of interest, allowing biochemists or structural biologists to probe or change the protein's function. For instance, one can start with the gene for a protein that binds a certain sequence of DNA, and, by directing an unnatural amino acid with a reactive side-chain into the binding site, create a new protein that cuts the DNA at the target-sequence, rather than binding it. By mutating aminoacyl tRNA synthetases, chemists have expanded the genetic codes of various organisms to include lab-synthesized amino acids with all kinds of useful properties: photoreactive, metal-chelating, xenon-chelating, crosslinking, spin-resonant, fluorescent, biotinylated, and redox-active amino acids. Another use is introducing amino acids bearing reactive functional groups for chemically modifying the target protein.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
Hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs) Palmer's lab identifies new ways to build HBOCs. Their design strategy focus on increasing the molecular diameter of HBOCs so they're unable to traverse across blood vessel walls into the tissue space and limit negative side-effects. Supporting Publications:
The lack of oral activity of DMT is due to rapid metabolism by the enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A). However, when taken in combination with an irreversible monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) or a reversible inhibitor of MAO-A (RIMA) such as a harmala alkaloid like harmine or harmaline or a pharmaceutical RIMA like moclobemide, DMT becomes orally active with an extended duration relative to parenteral use of DMT alone. Certain plants like Peganum harmala and the Banisteriopsis caapi used in ayahuasca contain harmala alkaloids which allow DMT to become orally active. When oral DMT is used with an MAOI and the materials are not naturally sourced, the combination is known as pharmahuasca. Changa is a plant-derived form of DMT that is smoked. Smoking and intravenous injection of DMT have extremely intense but very-short-lived effects, whereas intramuscular injection and particularly oral administration with an MAOI have less intense but longer-lasting effects.
Narrated by Jonathan Cullen, produced by Andy Paterson, directed by Patrick Forbes 22 September Fighting the G-Force, it looked at the Brooks Air Force Base in Texas; F-16 aircraft of the United States Air Force Thunderbirds; a G-force simulator on 30 May 1997, where a pilot experiences G-LOC; Major Mark Arlinghaus of the Thunderbirds; Captain Rick Forster, an F-16 instructor; Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, where F-16 pilots were trained; Major Rob Kesterson, an instructor with the 62nd Fighter Squadron; Lt Toby Brallier of the 62nd Fighter Squadron, who blacked out, but he was in a two-seat F-16 trainer; Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, where all USAF pilots learn about G-LOC, and are medically tested; Captain John Condojani and G-suits; a G-force centrifuge, rotating once every two seconds; pilots referred to G-LOC as 'doing the funky chicken'; to fly in an A-10, a pilot had to cope with 7.5G, and there were no exceptions; F-16 pilots had to cope with 9G; Captain Rick Fofi, a physical training officer with the USAF; women had been allowed to fly USAF fighter aircraft since 1993; Dr William Albery, chief of USAF aerospace medical research; Colonel James Dooley of flight motion effects at Brooks AFB in Texas, in the Armstrong Laboratory, named after Harry George Armstrong, known for the Armstrong limit; taller pilots were more susceptible to G-LOC; when the German Air Force inherited East German pilots, it discovered that the East German air force believed that G-LOC could be prevented by ruthless selection of pilots and better fitness preparation; Wing Commander Andreas Valentiner of the Luftwaffe Institute of Aviation Medicine; the German Air Force decided to ruthlessly select pilots by G-LOC in a centrifuge as well, before any training commenced - it was the only NATO air force to do this; Dr Brendan Godfrey, director of the Armstrong Laboratory; Captain Kelly Greene of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio; Colonel Ron Hill, head of the Crew Systems Directorate; Finley Barfield, chief engineer of the F-16, and what became the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System, to avoid controlled flight into terrain (CFIT); Dr Paul Werchan of Brooks AFB; Dr Gene McCall of the United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board; the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, planned to first fly in late 1997. Narrated by Piers Gibbon, produced by Simon Berthon, directed by Mark Rubens, made by 3BM Television with The Learning Channel (TLC) 29 September The Iceberg Cometh, about the dangers of icebergs in the Atlantic Ocean; for every metre above surface, four metres are below; the icebergs are made of snow that fell half a million years ago; Greenland is as large as western Europe; icebergs can travel thirty miles a day; the International Ice Patrol was formed in 1914, and now checks half a million square miles; patrols take place three times a week from March to July in the Atlantic Marine Ecozone; glaciologist Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge; the North Greenland Ice Core Project (NGRIP) began in 1995. Produced by David Frank, directed by Cathy Rogers, made by RDF Television with the Discovery Channel 13 October Coma, on 4 June 1996 a 32-year-old woman was beaten unconscious in New York Central Park; she was one of four women beaten by 22-year-old John Royster, with the last, 62-year-old Evelyn Alvarez on Park Avenue, not surviving, and Royster was caught from a fingerprint, and was sentenced to life without parole in 1998; neurosurgeon Jamshid Ghajar; the Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where a nine year old boy, Alex, had been hit by a car, and had severe head trauma, and had a head CT scan; the 'second accident' in the first week in hospital, where the brain swelled, and blocked the flow of blood; a tube was inserted into the brain, to release fluid from swelling, known as a ventriculostomy; the New York Hospital Pediatric ICU, now the Weill Cornell Medical Center; on day two, the eye pupils began to dilate, which can indicate brain swelling, and the intracranial pressure increased, until day three: by day twenty, Alex began to show greater responses, and by day 39, he was walking, and will make a good recovery; neurosurgeon Randall Chesnut, of Oregon, now at the University of Washington School of Medicine; Nicole Ward had a car accident, with a brain injury, but makes a good recovery, thanks to the ventriculostomy procedure; the International Conference on Recent Advances in Neurotraumatology (ICRAN) in early September 1996 at the University of Bologna in Rimini in north-east Italy, where new guidelines of the American Academy of Neurology would be disseminated, from work by the Colorado Medical Society in 1991. A US production, narrated by Piers Gibbon, produced by Paula Apsell, directed by Linda Garmon, made by Nova and WGBH. Shown on Nova on 7 October 1997 20 October Superhighway Robbery, an updated repeat 27 October Sun Storm, about geomagnetic storms, with Nicola Fox of the Heliophysics Science Division; Mike Lockwood (physicist); the March 1989 geomagnetic storm and Hydro-Québec's electricity transmission system; Telesat of Ottawa, and the High Altitude Observatory; a warning system for geomagnetic storms, the Cluster satellite network, was to be launched on 4 June 1996 on board Ariane flight V88, but the launch was a disaster; historical solar records at the Armagh Observatory showed how weather fluctuated with solar activity over the years, John Butler found a connection with Earth temperature; Brian Tinsley looked at electrical charge in clouds causing rain, found by aircraft of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); Ernest Hildner of the Space Weather Prediction Center; North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD); Daniel N. Baker of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics; the Advanced Composition Explorer, launched in August 1997, would detect the magnetic polarity of any solar winds. Narrated by Robin Ellis, directed by Dan Chambers, produced by Robert Eagle, made by Eagle & Eagle 3 November Natural Born Genius?, about inherited intelligence; the population geneticist Robert Plomin, who came to London in 1994; bioethicist Jonathan Glover; psychologist Camilla Benbow of Iowa State University, and the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth; statistician Charles Spearman was the first to conduct research into general intelligence in 1904, and found that schoolchildren who were good at one academic subject were also good at other subjects and vice versa, and invented the term g factor (psychometrics), although Francis Galton had briefly looked at the subject; psychologist Ian Deary of the University of Edinburgh, where much research on intelligence has been conducted; Alfred Binet of France invented the intelligence test, so that low-scoring children could be given extra help; cognitive psychologist Michael Howe of the University of Exeter believed that the 11-plus exams in England, for grammar school entrance, could possibly label children; much educational testing took place in the US, as the government believed in it, by the Educational Testing Service (ETS); psychologist Stephen J. Ceci disputed reading cast-iron outcomes of individual intelligence tests, but nonetheless believed that general intelligence could be predicted across a population as a whole; Chris Allander of the Army School of Recruiting; Michael Howe conducted environmental education research of parental support, and if that was as much a factor as genetic or innate ability - environmental educational research largely ignored any genetic component, which Robert Plomin dismissed; psychologist Sandra Scarr had conducted much research on adopted children, which largely and conclusively proved the case for genetically inherited intelligence and abilities - and she believed that you could only teach subjects to children of whom had enough capability; Robert Plomin's wife, psychologist Judith Dunn, and varying intelligence of children within individual families; identical twins raised apart had identical IQ scores; psychologist Thalia C. Eley of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience; from Robert Plomin's exhaustive adoption genetic studies, he finds a genetic link. Narrated by Barbara Flynn, produced by Rosalind Arden, directed by David Cresswell, made by John Gau Productions. John Gau had made Triumph of the Nerds the year before 10 November Losing It, about the persistence of sportspeople in the face of adversity; Steve Backley, javelin thrower gained three world records and was European champion in 1990 at the age of 21, but at the 1991 World Championships in Athletics in Tokyo, he didn't get past the qualifying round, where he had to throw 82m but he could only manage 78m; a fortnight later he threw 91m, gaining the British and Commonwealth records; mental strength is often the difference between success and failure; Doug Sanders, the American golfer, missed a straightforward put at the 1970 British Open; Sally Gunnell at the 1992 Olympics; sports psychologist Dave Collins (a former Royal Marine); footballer Lee Chapman who suffered a loss of confidence in 1982; Sally Gunnell, despite feeling intensely nervous before the final on 19 August of the 1993 World Championships in Athletics in Stuttgart, came first and broke the world record; Scottish golfer Sam Torrance and mental preparation for the zone; cricketer Michael Atherton; tennis player Mark Cox; neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield, and alpha waves or alpha rhythm; banishing negative thoughts; Paul Holmes, sports psychologist of the Great Britain Pistol Squad (run by British Shooting since 2007); total mental absorption, denoted by alpha wave brain activity on an ECG, appeared to strongly help success; psychologist David Milner. Narrated by sports commentator Brian Moore, produced by Geoff Deehan, made by Union Pictures 17 November The Day the Earth Was Hit, the Tunguska event on 30 June 1908; David Morrison (astrophysicist) of NASA Ames; Duncan Steel of The Spaceguard Foundation; physicist Edward Teller; Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik lead the investigation in 1927; the Tunguska explosion had the strength of a 15 megatonne nuclear explosion; astrophysicist Victor Clube and Bill Napier of Armagh Observatory; scientists from Tomsk State University visit Vanavara (rural locality) in the Siberian summer; the 1945 nuclear explosions had similarities in explosive effect to the Tunguska event; Benny Peiser; the Beta Taurids meteor shower; geochemist Evgeny Kolesnikov of Moscow University; tests at Sandia National Laboratories by Mark Boslough; astronomer Eleanor F. Helin of JPL, who worked on the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking programme. Narrated by Anthony Hyde, produced by Simon Welfare, directed by Stephen White, made by Granite Productions 24 November When Pigs Ruled the World, about the species that survived the extinction event 250 million years ago, to give rise to mammals; Roger Smith of the South African Museum in the Karroo desert; Scottish paleontologist Mike Benton of the University of Bristol; Peter Ward (paleontologist) of the University of Washington; around 1977 a farmer found a strange footprint, made by a therapsid, the ancestor of mammals, in the Guadalupian part of the middle Permian; biologist Colin Tudge, and how large genetic variety was needed for rapid natural selection to occur, to go from sauropsids to synapsids; animatronics technician Neill Gorton would develop a working moving model; the Moschops plant eater, the more dangerous carnivore Anteosaurus, and the slower Lystrosaurus; paleontologists did not know whether therapsids laid eggs, or have birth to live animals; nasal concha bones; the Permian–Triassic extinction event, 252 million years ago, which scientists did not know the direct cause, and had taken place over 100,000 years; Pangaea was formed 350 million years ago; Tony Hallam of the University of Birmingham, and the events in the Triassic; due the extinction event, Lystrosaurus became much greater in number, as its predators had become extinct; small reptiles evolved into the dinosaurs, and Lystrosaurus evolved into rodents; loss of species was being counted on Madagascar; conservationist Joanna Durbin (now of the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance) and the population of Lemur monkeys on Madagascar; Colin Tudge believed that mass extinctions were integral to evolution; Lystrosaurus lasted for ten million years. Narrated by Roger Allam, produced by Joanne Reay, directed by Howard Reay, made by The Mission, with the Discovery Channel 1 December Mindreaders, about autistic traits; Simon Baron Cohen at Cambridge; Temple Grandin in east Colorado; experimental psychologist Alison Gopnik of the University of California, Berkeley; the Sally–Anne test; Helen Tager-Flusberg, and Williams syndrome; Nancy Etcoff of Harvard Medical School; Phineas Gage; neurologist Robert T. Knight of UC Berkeley; Turner syndrome, where females miss the other X chromosome, and have autistic characteristics; David Skuse of the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health found that if this X chromosome originated from the mother, the chances of autistic characteristics were much higher; female brains were typically more attuned to faces than male brains; the book An Anthropologist on Mars. Narrated by British actor Bernard Hill, produced by John Wyver, directed by Jeremy Taylor, made by Illuminations Productions. The female actress was Zoe Margolis, later known for Girl with a One-Track Mind 15 December The Conspiracy of Science, about biotechnology companies in Boston (US); David Kent of Genzyme; the Economic Espionage Act of 1996; the murder of Tsunao Saitoh, and his daughter, in May 1996; Steven Rosenberg of the National Cancer Institute; David Blumenthal of Massachusetts General Hospital; a study by Sandoz (now Novartis) into calcium channel blockers, such as felodipine, by Curt Furberg; full disclosure, or lack of any, of known adverse effects remains a greatly controversial subject. Narrated by Neil Pearson, produced by Geoff Deehan, directed by Tim Shawcross, made by Union Pictures with The Learning Channel (TLC) 22 December Moscow, We Have a Problem, about the Mir EO-23 collision in 1997; Mir had a fire on 24 February 1997; Michael Foale travelled to Mir in May 1997 on Atlantis; the father of Michael Foale was an RAF Meteor pilot; Mir had been in orbit since February 1987, 248 miles above the Earth; the shuttle was docked with Mir for five days; cosmonaut Konstantin Feoktistov, designer of Mir; Mir was only meant to last three years; the oxygen that the cosmonauts breathe originates from the crew's urine; on 24 June 1997, due to saving money on a radar system, a manual docking of the Progress resupply vehicle took place, where the Progress vehicle hit a module, side on; NASA never conducted docking without radar, in such a possibly dangerous way; Vladimir Solovyov (cosmonaut), director of the RKA Mission Control Center; cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev accidentally disconnected an important power cable; two more cosmonauts arrived to mend the module on 14 August 1997; the two previous cosmonauts returned to Earth; on 15 September 1997, Mir came close to a NASA satellite; the International Space Station would be launched in June 1998, to cost £20bn; Frank L. Culbertson Jr, director from 1995 of the Shuttle–Mir program; Michael Foale returned to Earth on 27 September 1997 after 142 days, on the Atlantis shuttle; cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev. Narrated by Haydn Gwynne, produced by Julian Ware, directed by Patrick Fleming, made by ITN Factual
Plants are a rich source of ribosomally-synthesised and post-translationally modified cyclic peptides. Among these, the cyclotides are gene-coded products generated via processing of a larger precursor protein. The gene for the first such precursor is Oak1 (Oldenlandia affinis kalata clone number 1), which was shown to be responsible for the synthesis of kalata B1. The generic configuration of the precursor protein consists of an endoplasmic reticulum signal sequence, a non-conserved pro-region, a highly conserved region known as the N-terminal repeat (NTR), the mature cyclotide domain and finally a short hydrophobic C-terminal tail. The cyclotide domain may contain either one cyclotide sequence, as in the case of Oak1, or multiple copies separated by additional NTR sequences as seen for Oak2 and Oak4. In precursor proteins containing multiple cyclotide domains these can either be all identical sequences, as is the case for Oak4, or they can be different cyclotides as in Oak2 which contains sequences corresponding to kalata B3 and B6. Recently, the enzyme responsible for the backbone cyclization of cyclotides has been isolated from the medicinal plant Clitoria ternatea. This enzyme was named butelase 1 in accordance to the local name of the plant (Bunga Telang Ligase). Butelase 1 has been shown to cyclize the linear precursor of kalata B1 with >95% yield at a remarkable rate of 5.42×105 M−1 s−1.
== Design == Silicone gel sheets are usually made of medical silicone polymers such as polysiloxane and polydimethylsiloxane, along with silicon dioxide and volatile components. The long-chain silicone polymers form cross-linking with silicon dioxide and spread as a thin sheet. They are either flesh color (most common) or clear and come as either a single large rectangle sheet or a roll. Available size varies with brands.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
It is a synthetic cyclic heptapeptide modelled on alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone. A lactam bridge links two side chains, forming a ring that stabilises the molecule against proteolysis. It belongs to the broader melanocortin peptide family.
No national medicines agency has approved melanotan-2 for clinical use. Afamelanotide, a related but distinct peptide, holds a marketing authorisation in the European Union for a rare photosensitivity disorder. Melanotan-2 itself is handled as a laboratory chemical.
Its broad activity across melanocortin receptors makes it a tool for probing pigmentation, appetite and vascular signalling. Early trials recorded skin darkening and other effects that were not the original focus of the work. Those observations generated hypotheses that later studies have examined.
Major regulatory agencies have not approved it for any indication. Some countries permit it only under prescription frameworks, while others classify it as a controlled substance.