Degradation Mechanism of Methyl Mercury Selenoamino Acid Complexes: A Computational Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Density functional theory (DFT) calculations have been carried out on the possible degradation/demethylation mechanism of methyl mercury (CH(3)Hg(+)) complexes with free cysteine and seleonocysteine. The binding of CH(3)Hg(+) ions with one (seleno)amino acid is thermodynamically favorable. However, the binding with another acid molecule is a highly unfavorable process. The CH(3)Hg-(seleno)cysteinate then degrades to bis(methylmercuric)sulphide (selenide for the Se-containing complex) which in turn forms dimethyl mercury and HgS/HgSe, the latter being precipitated out as nanoparticles. The dimethyl mercury interacts with water molecules and regenerates the CH(3)HgOH precursor. The calculated free energies of formation confirm the thermodynamic feasibility of every intermediate step of the degradation cycle and fully support earlier experimental results. In completing the cycle, one unit of mercury precipitates out from two units of sources, and thereby Se antagonizes the Hg toxicity. The degradation of CH(3)Hg-L-cysteinate is thermodynamically more favorable than the formation of CH(3)Hg-L-cysteinate. The preferred degradation of the CH(3)Hg-L-cysteinate suggests that another mechanism for CH(3)Hg to cross the blood-brain barrier should exist.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".