Nitric Dioxide as Biologically Important Radical and its Role in Molecular Mechanism of Pancreatic Inflammation

This review addresses a few vital issues pertaining to the chemical aspect of inflammatory stress mediated by •NO2. Consequently, in this paper we have presented a short description of different instrumental methods for the detection of nitrogen dioxide (•NO2) in biological material and have demonstrated new instrumental method focusing on the reaction between an •NO2 and the two novel coordination ions of cis-[Cr(C2O4)(L-L)(OH2)2]+ [with L-L denoting either methyl 3-amino-2,3-dideoxy-α-D-arabino-hexopyranoside (AaraNH2) or methyl 3-amino-2,3-dideoxy-β-D-arabinohexopyranoside (BaraNH2)] studied by the stopped-flow technique. In order to investigate the biochemistry of •NO2 mediated inflammatory stress, we developed our method for specific detection of this radical in biological samples from pancreatic extracts and managed to identify •NO2 as an agent nitrating membrane localized proteins, as well as a selective oxidant of critical SH groups within membrane buried proteins. We have proved that the method is applicable to •NO2 assessment in tissue samples from rats with acute pancreatitis induced by L-arginine, where oxidative and nitrosative stress are supposed to play a key role in the pathomechanism of the disease.