X-Message-Number: 8444
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 09:22:36 -0400
From: yvan Bozzonetti <>
Subject: Adonitol

In msg # 8437, B. Wowk said:

>       Adonitol and glycerol are part of the homologous series of
>fully hydroxylated alkanes: methanol, ethylene glycol, glycerol,
>erythritol, adonitol.  The general trend in this series is one of
>decreasing hydrophobicity, decreasing permeation, decreasing glass
>forming ability, and increasing viscosity.

Why nobody is interested in erythritol if it look better? Is it toxic at
useful concentration?

>       Even if adonitol did penetrate well, I still wouldn't be
>excited by it unless it was a better glass former and less viscous
>in solution than glycerol.

Viscosity may be solved by putting the product in small caps (coacervats)
covered with sugar so that they are taken up as food by cells. Recall:
hemoglobin don't circulate freely in blood, it is packed in red blood
cells, why not use the same system for cryoprotectants?

What about the bonus to use dry ice temperature with adonitol ? If there is
a big problem (earthquake, large fire, revolution, deep economic crisis..=2E)
there may be no way to get in time liquid nitrogen. On the other side, dry
ice may be produced by mere depressurization of compressed CO2, a cheap and
common industrial product, simple to store in large quantity. We may
recover gas CO2 and compress it back with a compressor used by divers to
load their air bottle, so we can sustain many months of cooling without
exterior supplies. I don't say to discard LN2 technology right now, but we
could think and experiment with more secure technology for the long term.

                Yvan Bozzonetti.

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