right so this is uh a compound called
perhydro hinic toxin very difficult to
see actually is it's just a tiny Speck
in there probably less than a milligram
of this compound in this vial and yet
that will be enough easily to to kill a
human being so it's a it's an incredibly
toxic part of the the Nature's chemical
warfare frogs have evolved all sorts of
mechanisms to defend against predators
and birds and what have you so uh this
is one of the compounds they can excrete
when they're under attack so on on the
surface of the Frog you get this uh
gooey excretion if it's under attack it
looks like a white foamy substance and
these are only frogs which are usually
found in Latin America uh things like
that they're endangered species so we're
not allowed uh one but uh here's my
model of one uh but actually they're
they're even smaller than this so the
frogs you get over in this country are
fairly sizable um these frogs are
probably about the size of your
thumbnail very very tiny very brightly
colored so this one's blue but this is
nowhere near as bright as uh some of
these frogs there's Reds and yellows
it's essentially screaming danger so
when the the bird comes in it it it
maybe peck it it's the Frog needs
something to act really quickly and over
the millions of years they developed
these compounds and they actually act on
the nervous system so they what they do
is they paralyze the bird instantly so
the bird is one one minute about to have
dinner the next minute is completely
Frozen like a statue and of course the
Frog can hop away the bird eventually
dies of asphixiation because it the
lungs it all the breathing all those
muscles everything gets paralyzed we'll
go back to this again so there it's
probably just less than one milligram in
here and you can you can't see it it's
it's so small it's about of Speck of
dust sort of size uh about 3
mg were first isolated from a 11,00
frogs so you can see that these things
are these compounds are so potent that
the frogs really don't need to make very
much of this in order to be effective in
in their defense of the against you know
multiple Predators when the Spanish and
others the French went out to the uh
South America hundreds of years ago now
and they were exploring uh of course
they they turned up and they thought
well the native people here just have
bows and arrows or Spears these guys
will be a walkover but of course they
won't because what they had uh were
poison darts so sometimes these frogs
are called poison dart frogs or poison
arrow uh frogs so what they would good
do they they would capture these frogs
and these frogs only uh make this toxin
when they're in uh the natural
environment if you have them in
captivity they don't have the right
dietary source they can't make these
molecules uh so these native Indians
would go and they would keep them in a
hollow tube and when they needed them
they would take a spear or a dart and
they put it down the mouth of the Frog
to the other end to its leg and oddly
enough that would make the Frog sweat
quite a bit and you get all this uh
white gooey uh excretion coming from the
skin and you just take your arrows and
you just twirl it around in this
secretion and these arrows then would be
poisonous for around about a year here
so this these compounds are are quite
stable entities quite stable compounds
and of course what happened was the uh
the the Invaders came over and of course
when they got shot with these darts or
Spears with this poison on the tip they
would be paralyzed just like the bird
just like anything else so it birds are
quite small humans are quite big still
submilligram quantities of this material
is enough to paralyze and indeed kill a
human being so these very potent
compounds right well you can get it from
frogs but if you remember I said 1,00
frogs will give you about 3 migrs of
this material we wanted to make these
compounds in a synthetically viable way
so you could make grams if you needed to
to allow these further studies to go on
these could also be potentially useful
compounds for the treatment of pain
maybe in the future certainly good lead
compounds for study because pain
messages also go through the nerve
nervous system so this is uh this is
this particular one molecule here so
this is per hydr hisonic Toxin and it's
actually this is a a a synthetic
compound so there's about 15 of these
compounds and it's just these two side
chains which are different this core
structure in the middle is always the
same that the blue one here that's
nitrogen this is a an oxygen so this is
a a hydroxy function here
and it's the combination of these two
and the exact spacing between these two
which is key to why this molecule works
so this mimics a natural
neurotransmitter used to uh convey the
message between uh uh two parts of the
the nervous system so uh you can think
of a nervous system as an electrical
cable and then you'll get a connector
Junction so imagine uh uh two connectors
coming together a plug in a socket now
this the atile chine molecule transmits
from the plug to the socket the spacing
of these two functionalities here is
absolutely key so these fit the key that
acety Coline normally would fit in to
trigger the response if you are clumsy
or indeed if he got shot by a poison
arrow um this gets into your bloodstream
it can get
immediately uh to the peripheral nervous
system so that's all your muscles your
heart your
lungs uh anything that moves in your
body and it can block The receptors uh
in those uh or block the um the signals
from your brain to your lungs for
example to tell it to breathe in and out
now you don't consciously think that
you're doing that but your brain's a
very clever thing it sets so many things
on autop parts
um but it's constantly sending out
messages many many hundreds a second to
control what's going on in your body and
this little molecule here and it would
take just a few of these molecules to
completely shut down those uh muscular
uh neurotransmissions if you like if it
got into your central nervous system
that is in uh your spine and your
brain it could completely wipe out any
messages that are coming from your hands
from any senses to your brain so in many
ways that's why uh it could be very
useful for for pain management