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)

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
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.

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):

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 [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6257891_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 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)

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)