In vitro inhibition of human red blood cell acetylcholinesterase (AChE) by temephos-oxidized products.

Temephos (Tem) is an organophosphorus pesticide widely used to kill and prevent the growth of the main vectors for the transmission of dengue, zika, and chikungunya viruses. In chlorinated water, Tem is oxidized to its dioxon-sulfoxide (Tem-dox-SO), dioxon-sulfone (Tem-dox-SO2), and sulfoxide (Tem-SO) derivatives; however, these compounds are not commercially available to be used as standards and in toxicological studies. In the present study, we synthesized and characterized the Tem-oxidation products and the compound 4,4'-sulfinyldiphenol. These compounds were obtained by a simple reaction between Tem or 4,4'-thiodiphenol with sodium hypochlorite or potassium periodate, and were characterized by IR, NMR, and UPLC-HRESIMS. The in vitro evaluation of inhibitory potency of Tem-oxidized products on human red blood cell acetylcholinesterase (RBC AChE) showed that Tem-dox-SO2 was the most potent inhibitor of human RBC AChE, and its effect was more pronounced than that observed for ethyl-paraoxon, a potent typical inhibitor of AChE. An HPLC-DAD method for the analysis of metabolic products of Tem was developed, which may be useful for monitoring in biological and environmental samples. The ability of Tem-oxidized metabolites to inhibit human RBC AChE suggests that the addition of Tem to chlorinated drinking water could result in an increase in the risk of RBC AChE inhibition after exposure.

Characterization of acetylcholinesterase from elm left beetle, Xanthogaleruca luteola and QSAR of temephos derivatives against its activity.

Insect acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is the principal target for organophosphate (OP) and carbamate (CB) insecticides. In this research, an AChE from third instar larvae of elm left beetle, Xanthogaleruca luteola was purified by affinity chromatography. The enzyme was purified 75.29-fold with a total yield of 8.51%. As shown on denaturing SDS-PAGE, the molecular mass of purified AChE was 70kDa. The enzyme demonstrated maximum activity at pH7 and 35°C. Furthermore, a series of temephos (Tem) derivatives with the general structure of P(O)XP(O) (1-44) were prepared, synthesized and characterized by 31P, 13C, 1H NMR and FT-IR spectral techniques. The toxicity of 36 new Tem derivatives was screened on the third instar larvae and the compound compound 1,2 cyclohexane-N,N'-bis(N,N'-piperidine phosphoramidate) exhibited the highest insecticidal potential. The method of kinetic analysis is applied in order to obtain the maximum velocity (Vmax), the Michaelis constant (Km) and the parameters characterizing the inhibition type for inhibitors with >75% mortality in preliminary bioassay. The inhibition mechanism was mixed and inhibitory constant (Ki) was calculated as 4.70µM-1min-1 for this compound. Quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) equations of these compounds indicated that the electron orbital energy has major effect on insecticidal properties.