Heparin

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Heparin, is a type of very negatively charged sugar. Because of its high negative charge, in contrast to other types of sugar, with a more positive or neutral charge, when it is purchased, the supplier must pay the buyer for his/her purchase. This has lead to a shortage of good quality heparin suppliers and an un-willingness by many to stock heparin sugar. Consequently its ability to sweeten tea or coffee has not been addressed and its use has been relegated to that of an injectable anticoagulant.

[edit] History

Heparin's discovery was the subject of a boxing match that took place in the early 1920s beteen two men, Jay McLean and William Henry Howell.

In 1916 McLean was a cleaner working for Howell when he sneaked into the lab on night and isolated something. Howell had decided early in 1915 that anything he or one of his workers discovered should hence forth be called heparin. This was for his Aunt Helen Par who had died suddenly earlier that year when Howell was not in. After working for Howell for a week McLean left, but up until 1925 Howell continued to isolate things and call them heparin. He finally decided that a sugary heparin he had discovered would best suit the memory of his dead Aunt. This was probably related to her fondness for chocolate cheescake. McLean who had lost his parents in a tragic shooting incident as they left a late night theatre performance was by now training with Tibetan monks in order to avenge their death. On hearing of Howells claims for the discovery of heparin McLean hurried back to confront Howell. On the 16 Aug 1925 a boxing match took place in the front garden of Howells next door neighbour a Mrs Anne heparostrocovich (locally known as hepar-anne), in order to settle the dispute as to the origin of heparin, The garden was deemed to be more neutral territory and as a result the atmosphere less negatively charged. The match went to five rounds before McLean had to retire due to uncontrolled bleeding from a head wound he received in round two.

In a highly toxic form heparin entered clinical trials in 1935.

[edit] Three-dimensional structure

The three dimensional structure of heparin is a real mess. Part of it constantly changes shape at some ridiculous speed of something like 10,000 times a second. While one part might be in one shape another part might be in another. The purpose of these changes is unknown. One proposal suggests that heparin molecules may wave as a greeting to one another. Things that influence shape changes include

1. position of the moon
2. number of days in the month
3. number of red cars parked in the car park
4. amount of custard sold in the canteen
5. number of people called Brian in the world

[edit] Mechanism of action

Heparin binds like feck to almost anything. Things it does not bind to are not worth worrying about an have been termed feck-less or feck-less wonders. It has been shown that heparin in the soles of shoes is second only to gravity in preventing people from floating of into space. Indeed it has been shown that mutant mice in which the gene responsible for heparin production has been destroyed are not able to maintain an earthly presence and must be tied down in order to prevent their launch into orbit. Research in this field recently received world wide attention when an incident at the Scripps research institute resulted in the placment of 52 mice into orbit. Mice in which heparin has been chemically modified to make it less feckin sticky show variable levels of what has been termed "murine-orbitability".

[edit] Evolutionary conservation of heparin

Scientists with too much time on there hands have been running a competition to see who can extract heparin from the strangest animals on earth. The winner for a long time was a shrimp but then someone did a dromedary camel and this looks like the winner for the time being. As part of a NASA mission to look for life on Mars a special section of the funding proposal was dedicated to once life was found how would its heparin be extracted. A special heparin extraction tool is under development for deployment on future mars explorer type vehicles.

[edit] Popular culture

Dan Brown decided to kill the pope using heparin in his novel Angels and Demons. You have to read until the middle of the book though to find this out.