Talk:Spermidine

Untitled

Spermidine is the chemical that gives a male's semen its smell. It helps to protect the DNA from harm before it reaches the egg.

There's more info here: http://www.moleculeoftheday.com/2006/06/15/spermine-dna-packing-material/ Apparently it helps pack DNA and possibly acts as a buffer to help sperm survive on its journey to the egg. And as to the above poster (the above above, not directly), yes wikipedia articles (particlarly science ones) are sometimes lacking in some info & hard to get your head round, but some info, as long as it's true info, is better than none :)TrentandtheAcrobats (talk) 09:50, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and according to my lecture slides, spermidine can be used to replace the protein in RNAase P (this enzyme is usually composed of RNA + protein), apparently it's +ve charge helps the folding of tRNA (which is what RNAase does). This generally just demonstrates that the RNA part of this enzyme is the important part, rather than the protein.TrentandtheAcrobats (talk) 09:54, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Sources

I suggest deleting the entire section entitled "sources" since the two links don't support the Wikipedia author's general speculation. While it may be true that some of the foods listed are higher in spermidine than other foods, the research is nowhere near comprehensive and so it is mere speculation that the foods listed would beat out most foods available in general, since the list is based on a limited number of foods tested. Regardless, grapefruit is not listed in either of the links except as grapefruit juice from three samples (which may even be from the same carton of juice). Grapefruit juice is a processed food and hence spermidine has almost surely been lost in the manufacturing process. Also, there are countless references to grapefruit having spermidine in it, with most of these articles talking about human lifespan. At the very least, calling spermidine in grapefruit a "popular myth" as the Wikipedia author has done is totally unsupported and should be immediately remedied, IMO. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.193.5.58 (talk) 20:21, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

No longer mentions grapefruit. Has good ref now. Could add to table. - Rod57 (talk) 09:41, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Is there any benefit from spermidine in diet

Since we make it indirectly from arginine from protein why do we need dietary sources ? Can we say what evidence there is for benefits of dietary intake of spermidine ? How much do we need/make/use a day ? - Rod57 (talk) 10:10, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Spermidine/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Comment(s)

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"but what is it??" is the frustrated question this topic page, as with MANY Wikipedia topic pages, leaves me asking. i am not an idiot. i am not uneducated. i am not ignorant. i even know some things. a little bit of too much knowledge here and there. yet this page stub does not do the ONE BASIC THING an Encyclopedia entry is supposed to do: Tell the reader WHAT THE ENTRY IS. i see a huge amount of paraphrasing from science journals and other encyclopedic or technical documentation by "wikipeople" who do not know what they are writing about when they create these entries. This is a PERVASIVE problem with WikiPedia when trying to use it for actual reference (as opposed to casual curiosities, confirming suspected ideas or solving a debate). Worse, the mindset of some (not all) of the administrators and moderators is "geek first, humane later... maybe. oh and go RTFM. and here are some context-devoid copy/paste bits to make it look like i'm helping you." On top of that, the WikiMedia tool itself is used in such an inhumane and geeky hackerish way that normal human beings (people not specializing in computers, computer scripting, development, etc) are left unable to take advantage of the potential of this would-be fantastic tool. It comes off as hackerish (in a sloppy and bad way, not in a "cool and accomplished" way). The admins and the tool comes off as ELITIST. It is pedantic. It is less information and more a set of pages made up of paragraphs of links to other pages of pedantic links to other pages. There is a rule about NOT causing a person to look up 42 vocabulary words in order to define ONE. How about following that rule? WikiX uses tagging and style coding that is different from every other known (common/familiar) system in existence on the Internet (and that's not to say HTML is the best thing since sliced bread, but it's READABLE and that is prime directive when communication of information is the goal!). We have the technology for WYSIWYG. USE IT, for pity's sake. WikiX looks and feels like my worst Asperger's Syndrome writing moments, except i tend to at least make my point (repeatedly, but it can't be said to be missed - but since this whole thing looks like it was produced by an unfortunately unsocially skilled person, it would not surprise me if the whole system from top to bottom reeks of fellow people with autism disorders). "Sign your posts by typing four tildes." This is intuitive how? Is there a problem with using the techniques used in forums or anywhere else on the Internet where users LOG IN? "Forums are focused on communication," you might argue, "not information and documentation." Yes, well, if WikiMedia/WikiPedia (as i don't know where the flaw lies; tool or implementation) is to be a collection of open source knowledge, communication is a VITAL PROCESS TO NURTURE in order to meet that goal. i fully expect everything i have to say here to be totally written off with some pedantic "guideline" which uses the letter of the system to defeat the spirit of the system, or even just deleted. PROVE ME WRONG. Resolve my issue with this page for starters. Put my comments into wider circulation, wherever they "properly belong" in the Wikipedia improvement suggestion box (wherever that is). Do something POSITIVE with this input. You will improve Wikipedia by sincerely considering my words, i promise you. Information wants to be free... but you obfuscate it with the very same red tape that "Open Source" wishes to avoid by BEING "OPEN." Open Source does not have to be open only to "geeks and computer nerds." i say this as a former computer geek/nerd who has realized that the rest of the world needs us to make the tools accessible to humanity, not select groups or elite sects of underground and mostly anonymous computer dungeon dwellers. Born again user, i call myself. And, for crying out loud, why are tools like this STILL too primitive to understand paragraph spacing and word wrap??!! Dysamoria (talk) 05:58, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 06:03, 7 April 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 06:41, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

More regarding sources

The Source section currently says

Good dietary sources of spermidine are aged cheese, mushrooms, soy products, legumes, corn, and whole grains.

Food	Spermidine mg/kg	notes & refs
Chickpea	~29
Green peas	46.6
Soybean,dried	128	German
Soybean,dried	207	Japanese
chicken liver	48.7
Cheddar, 1yr old	199.5
Cauliflower (cooked)	~25
Broccoli (cooked)	~25
Mushroom	88.6	Japanese
Mango	30
Rice bran	50

Note - spermidine content varies by source and age. See ref for details.

But I extracted a somewhat fuller list of the top items from the referenced Ali( 2011) source (which presents a compilation a bunch of other studies which it cites in its Table 1 using a "Country and reference" citation column):

Food Product	Spermidine Mean	Country and reference
Soybean, dried	207	Japan (4)b
Cheddar, matured (1 year)	199.5	UK (22)a
Soybean, dried	128	Germany (51)b
Mushroom	88.6	Japan (6)c
Ground beef	71.7	UK (22)a
Green peas, cooked	65.2	UK (22)a
Rice bran	51	Japan (15)b
Chicken liver	48.7	Czech R (5)g
Green peas, frozen	46.6	Czech R (23) d
Corn	43.2	Japan (15)b
Broccoli, fresh	41.3	Norway (16)a
Tea, black leaves	38.1	UK (22)a
Muscles [sic]	37.7	France (38)e
Potato crisps	37.6	UK (2)a
Mustard	34.2	France (38)e
Broccoli, fresh	33.2	Germany (51)b
Cauliflower, fresh	31.2	Germany (51)b
Mango	30	Japan (15)b
Dill	29.2	Japan (15)b
Chickpea	28.8	France (38)e
Cauliflower, fresh	28.3	Norway (16)a
Broccoli, Cooked	27.3	Norway (16)a
Celeriac	26.7	Germany (51)b
Cauliflower, Cooked	26.2	Norway (16)a

Should the table perhaps be expanded? Some high-spermadine rows (including divergent values for soybeans) are not yet present in the WP article. Also, most of country names are currently missing. (It's an odd method of referring to studies, but I guess the source column shouldn't be changed in the WP article to refer to the original sources, as Ali(2011) did unit conversions like nmol/g to mg/kg that are unlikely to be backtrack-checked by WP editors, so Ali(2011) should continue to be cited as the immediate ref, but those country names should at least be filled out.)

Notes:

1. In Ali(2011), Table 1 is a little confusing because some row headings that say "[food], [preparation type X]" are followed by lines that instead of saying "[food], [preparation type Y]" are just abbreviated as "[preparation type x]". So if you want to check my extraction by looking at the full original table, you'll find the "Green peas, cooked" row in Table 1 labeled "Cooked" underneath the row for "Green peas, frozen" (I confirmed that that row is referring to peas because it cites a study that found 428-470 nmol spermadine per g of frozen green peas -- see Susan Bardócz ∗, George Grant, David S. Brown, Ann Ralph, Arpad Pusztai "Polyamines in food—implications for growth and health". The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, Volume 4, Issue 2, February 1993)

2. The "muscles" presumably refers to mussels, which is why I put "[sic]". It says "muscles" in the "Table 3. Polyamine contents in fish and seafoods" category of the "France (38)e" original source study -- see Bernard Cipolla, R Havouis,J P Moulinoux. "Polyamine contents in current foods: A basis for polyamine reduced diet and a study of its long term observance and tolerance in prostate carcinoma patients". Amino Acids 33(2):203-12 · September 2007

-- Undomelin (talk) 22:26, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

References

Wheat germ source

Thank you for this page on Spermidine. It was very helpful.

The information stating wheat germ as the highest source of spermidine is likely correct. However, I believe the original source was inadvertently left off, because the source cited [16] is not scholarly. Source [16] cites an article that itself has an incorrect source for information on wheat germ content of spermidine. The following source does contain the information on the spermidine content of wheat germ.

Kazuhiro N, Ritsuko S, Keiko K, Kazuei I. Decrease in Polyamines with Aging and Their Ingestion from Food and Drink. Journal of Biochemistry. 2006;(1):81. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsovi&AN=edsovi.00004606.200601000.00010&site=eds-live. Accessed May 29, 2020.

Thank you so much for your time! MorrowNJ (talk) 16:31, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Rip off products

Wheat germ has 253mg / kg, so an ounce has about 7 mg. Most of the pricey supplements are apparent rip offs selling 'wheat germ extract' at amounts like 500 - 1500 mg, typically for 2 capsules, where very few are telling you that the actual spermidine content is like 1%. This fact, which is sourceable should be in article as a public service vs these vendors. Lycurgus (talk) 06:33, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Also this a pretty good truth/verificationist thing due to the clear hard fact of a molecule which is regularly assayed in lab reports. They can't actually lie about this and get away with it by the standard of having a third party lab perform the assay on a sample of product. The more ethical of them do this and that's where the low percentages come from. I wouldn trust one that was saying it was more than 5% without such an independent report. 98.4.112.204 (talk) 06:48, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

There are exceptions and one can't be utterly untrusting, ordered a product that was 10mg of spermidine trichloride per cap so the bottle of 30 is a lil better than a kilo of wheat germ. It acknowledges the situation above and competes effectively. 98.4.112.204 (talk) 15:45, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

To add to article

Basic information to add to this article: the etymology/origin of the word "spermidine," as well as when (and by whom) this compound was first identified. 76.190.213.189 (talk) 14:59, 16 July 2023 (UTC)