Abstract

Over 300 species of naturally occurring-organoarsenicals have been identified with the development of modern analytical techniques. Why there so many environmental organoarsenicals exist is a real enigma. Are they protective or harmful? Or are they simply by-products of existing pathways for non-arsenical compounds? Fundamental unanswered questions exist about their occurrence, prevalence and fate in the environment, metabolisms, toxicology and biological functions. This review focuses on possible answers. As a beginning, we classified them into two categories: water-soluble and lipid-soluble organoarsenicals (arsenolipids). Continual improvements in analytical techniques will lead to identification of additional organoarsenicals. In this review, we enumerate identified environmental organoarsenicals and speculate about their pathways of synthesis and degradation based on structural data and previous studies. Organoarsenicals are frequently considered to be nontoxic, yet trivalent methylarsenicals, synthetic aromatic arsenicals and some pentavalent arsenic-containing compounds have been shown to be highly toxic. The biological functions of some organoarsenicals have been defined. For example, arsenobetaine acts as an osmolyte, and membrane arsenolipids have a phosphate-sparing role under phosphate-limited conditions. However, the toxicological properties and biological functions of most organoarsenicals are largely unknown. The objective of this review is to summarize the toxicological and physiological properties and to provide novel insights into future studies.

摘要

随着现代分析技术的发展，已鉴定出超过 300 种天然存在的有机砷。为什么存在如此多的环境有机砷是一个真正的谜。它们是保护性的还是有害的？还是它们只是现有非砷化合物途径的副产品？关于它们在环境中的发生、流行和归宿、新陈代谢、毒理学和生物学功能，存在基本的未解决问题。这篇评论的重点是可能的答案。首先，我们将它们分为两类：水溶性和脂溶性有机砷（arsenolipids）。分析技术的不断改进将导致更多有机砷的鉴定。在本次审查中，我们列举了已确定的环境有机砷，并根据结构数据和先前的研究推测它们的合成和降解途径。有机砷通常被认为是无毒的，但三价甲基砷、合成芳族砷和一些五价含砷化合物已被证明具有剧毒。一些有机砷的生物学功能已经确定。例如，砷甜菜碱充当渗透剂，而膜砷脂在磷酸盐限制条件下具有磷酸盐保留作用。然而，大多数有机砷的毒理学特性和生物学功能在很大程度上是未知的。本综述的目的是总结毒理学和生理学特性，并为未来的研究提供新的见解。