Urea

About: Urea is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 21394 publications have been published within this topic receiving 382444 citations. The topic is also known as: carbamide & carbonic acid diamide.

The mysteries of nitrogen balance.

Abstract: The first part of this review is concerned with the balance between N input and output as urinary urea. I start with some observations on classical biochemical studies of the operation of the urea cycle. According to Krebs, the cycle is instantaneous and automatic, as a result of the irreversibility of the first enzyme, carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 1 (EC 6.3.5.5; CPS-I), and it should be able to handle many times the normal input to the cycle. It is now generally agreed that acetyl glutamate is a necessary co-factor for CPS-1, but not a regulator. There is abundant evidence that changes in dietary protein supply induce coordinated changes in the amounts of all five urea-cycle enzymes. How this coordination is achieved, and why it should be necessary in view of the properties of the cycle mentioned above, is unknown. At the physiological level it is not clear how a change in protein intake is translated into a change of urea cycle activity. It is very unlikely that the signal is an alteration in the plasma concentration either of total amino-N or of any single amino acid. The immediate substrates of the urea cycle are NH3 and aspartate, but there have been no measurements of their concentration in the liver in relation to urea production. Measurements of urea kinetics have shown that in many cases urea production exceeds N intake, and it is only through transfer of some of the urea produced to the colon, where it is hydrolysed to NH3, that it is possible to achieve N balance. It is beginning to look as if this process is regulated, possibly through the operation of recently discovered urea transporters in the kidney and colon. The second part of the review deals with the synthesis and breakdown of protein. The evidence on whole-body protein turnover under a variety of conditions strongly suggests that the components of turnover, including amino acid oxidation, are influenced and perhaps regulated by amino acid supply or amino acid concentration, with insulin playing an important but secondary role. Molecular biology has provided a great deal of information about the complex processes of protein synthesis and breakdown, but so far has nothing to say about how they are coordinated so that in the steady state they are equal. A simple hypothesis is proposed to fill this gap, based on the self-evident fact that for two processes to be coordinated they must have some factor in common. This common factor is the amino acid pool, which provides the substrates for synthesis and represents the products of breakdown. The review concludes that although the achievement and maintenance of N balance is a fact of life that we tend to take for granted, there are many features of it that are not understood, principally the control of urea production and excretion to match the intake, and the coordination of protein synthesis and breakdown to maintain a relatively constant lean body mass.

First-Principles Molecular Dynamics Study of a Deep Eutectic Solvent: Choline Chloride/Urea and Its Mixture with Water

Abstract: First-principles molecular dynamics simulations in the canonical ensemble at temperatures of 333 and 363 K and at the corresponding experimental densities are carried out to investigate the behavior of the 1:2 choline chloride/urea (reline) deep eutectic solvent and its equimolar mixture with water. Analysis of atom–atom radial and spatial distribution functions and of the H-bond network reveals the microheterogeneous structure of these complex liquid mixtures. In neat reline, the structure is governed by strong H-bonds of the trans- and cis-H atoms of urea to the chloride ion. In hydrous reline, water competes for the anions, and the H atoms of urea have similar propensities to bond to the chloride ions and the O atoms of urea and water. The vibrational spectra exhibit relatively broad peaks reflecting the heterogeneity of the environment. Although the 100 ps trajectories allow only for a qualitative assessment of transport properties, the simulations indicate that water is more mobile than the other spe...

Compounds containing alkoxysilane and amino groups

Abstract: N-alkoxysilylalkyl-aspartic acid esters are prepared by the reaction of equimolar quantities of amino-alkyl alkoxysilanes with maleic or fumaric acid esters. These N-alkoxysilylalkyl-aspartic acid esters are particularly useful as reactants in the preparation of prepolymers containing alkoxysilane and urea groups.

Prebiotic synthesis in atmospheres containing CH4, CO, and CO2. II. Hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde and ammonia.

Abstract: The electric discharge synthesis of HCN, H2CO, NH3 and urea has been investigated using various mixtures of CH4, CO, CO2, N2, NH3, H2O, and H2. HCN and H2CO were each synthesized in yields as high as 10% from CH4 as a carbon source. Similar yields were obtained from CO when H2/CO greater than 1.0 and from CO2 when H2/CO2 greater than 2.0. At H2/CO2 less than 1.0 the yields fall off drastically. Good yields of NH3 (0.7 to 5%) and fair yields of urea (0.02 to 0.63%) based on nitrogen were also obtained. The directly synthesized NH3 together with the NH3 obtained from the hydrolysis of HCN, nitriles and urea could have been a major source of ammonia in the atmosphere and oceans of the primitive earth. These results show that prebiotic syntheses from HCN and H2CO to give products such as purines and sugars and some amino acids could have occurred in primitive atmospheres containing CO and CO2 provided the H2/CO and H2/CO2 ratios were greater than about 1.0. Methane containing atmospheres give comparable quantities of HCN and H2CO, and are superior in the synthesis of amino acids.