Muscarine; elimination, degradation

[dyplow]

I am researching the toxicology of the poisonous mushroom Amanita muscaria and looking for the cleanest simplest method to eliminate or neutralize the alkaloid muscarine from an extract. There are other alkaloids in this species (like muscimol), but I want to leave them intact. Since muscarine has been studied for a very long time, many procedures exist for extracting, isolating, degrading, oxidizing, and precipitating it. I am only wondering which method(s) might work best for yielding an extract free of active muscarine (and free of any toxic chemical reagents). The procedure may extract the muscarine, or convert it into a non-active form. Being a novice, my limited knowledge guesses that methods using gold-chloride or silver-oxide might be fairly simple and non-toxic, but I really need to defer to the expertise present here.

 

I can supply more information about muscarine if needed.

 

thanks

[hermanntrude]

What's your purpose? are you trying to extract hallucinogens? If so, please try a different forum. the shroomery.org, for instance.

[dyplow]

are you trying to extract hallucinogens?

 

Good grief no. I’m way too old to be a hippie. I’m just wanting to do a process-of-elimination to see what fraction might be killing pets in Colorado. (And I think you might be mistaking this genus for the illegal & hallucinogenic Psilocybe.)

[DrDNA]

Good grief no. I’m way too old to be a hippie. I’m just wanting to do a process-of-elimination to see what fraction might be killing pets in Colorado. (And I think you might be mistaking this genus for the illegal & hallucinogenic Psilocybe.)

 

Hmmm....

Actually, all the hippies that I know ARE old.

 

And Amanita muscaria (aka the legendary "Soma") IS VERY hallucinogenic. It has a longer ethnopharmacological history than perhaps any other hallucinogen; except maybe ergot.

 

Many or most of Amanita muscaria’s closely related cousins are EXTREMELY poisonous.

However, if you do some research, there is a chance that you will focus your attention and efforts on something besides Amanita muscaria to blame for your pet poisonings.

 

In any event, what you claim you are attempting to do is not "simple" especially if you indeed have no idea what active compound(s) you are looking for.

 

You will need access to full blown chemistry department and then the paths to your goal probably include, but are not limited to:

1. Collect a WHOLE bunch of the material.

2. Dry and grind to a consistent powder

3. Figure out if what you want to isolate is organic solvent or water soluble.

4. Soxlet extraction (kind of like making coffee but more efficient)

5. Extensive extractions (eg, Chloroform/water; methylene chloride/water; hexane/water; etc....). Monitor with TLC

6. Liquid Chromatography. Monitor with TLC, NMR and/or Mass Spec. (GC if the compounds are volatile, known and characterized)

7. Analytical HPLC, then Preparative HPLC. Monitor by NMR and/or Mass Spec. and/or GC if the compounds are volatile, known and characterized.

etc, etc..........

8. Then you have to figure out what the isolates actually do. Are you planning on testing these on animals?

 

Conclusion: The SAFEST, MOST PRECISE AND EASIEST method by a long shot is to go where others have gone before you.

Amanita muscaria and it's relatives have been EXTENSIVELY studied and many or all of their active compounds have been isolated and characterized.

 

Therefore, you just need to read, not experiment, to find out what might be killing mushroom-eating dogs in your area.

If that is indeed what you really want to do.

Edited January 30, 2009 by DrDNA

[hermanntrude]

Good grief no. I’m way too old to be a hippie. I’m just wanting to do a process-of-elimination to see what fraction might be killing pets in Colorado. (And I think you might be mistaking this genus for the illegal & hallucinogenic Psilocybe.)

 

not mistaken. Psilocybe is the most commonly used but some of the harder druggies like to poison themselves with amanita so they get wilder visions.

 

Anyway i'm not sure of any chemical methods to isolate the muscaria. Generally the very active substances in mushrooms tend to be very sensitive too, so destroy one, destroy them all.