Comment · Sat, January 2, 2021 · ND Owner
Ergothioneine
Original post in this thread
Allan314 · 8 points
Ergothioneine (ET) is an amino acid with extremely strong evidence for its theoretical (but largely unappreciated) therapeutic importance. To wit:
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* ET has a specific dedicated transporter ( SLC22A4/OCTN1 )
* ET has undergone positive selection in Europeans i.e. it's fitness benefit to carriers is appreciable as a more active variant increases fitness by at least a few percent -- a substantial evolutionary benefit for a single change
* ET is ubiquitously found in tissues
* ET levels are highly conserved -- ET is excreted a very slow rate
* ET preferentially locates in area of injury
https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/1873-3468.13123
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-020-0855-1
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2885499/
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Strong benefits may of course be limited/more noticeable in pathological, aged, or otherwise non-healthy populations. But a very interesting potential supplement nonetheless.
What they were answering
TheOptimizzzer · 3 points
Here’s a list of content for a variety of mushrooms.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/ergothioneine
Here are some other sources.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050912080429.htm
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24168107/
Also looks like spirulina might be a good source.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308814611009344
Definitely an interesting compound and something that likely would have been much more prevalent in our diets historically as hunter and gatherers.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
What would be really interesting is if we could have our HP-TLC methods separate and quantify the L-ergothioneine in them. It might already be showing up as a band on our TLC plate and we just have not elucidated what it is. If that's the case, we might be able to have one single method for both the ID of the mushroom AND the quantification of the L-ergothioneine. I think the issue will be the concentration in the final powder. That study you linked is saying it shows up at 0.2% in raw mushroom, which might be too low to accurately quantify on HP-TLC. However, the powders have a lot less water weight, so the concentration should be higher. We'll have to do some testing to really know. Even so, there are some HPLC methods using pre-column derivatization that would work.