Thiosulfoxide (sulfane) sulfur: new chemistry and new regulatory roles in biology
Open accessAbstract
The understanding of sulfur bonding is undergoing change. Old theories on hypervalency of sulfur and the nature of the chalcogen-chalcogen bond are now questioned. At the same time, there is a rapidly expanding literature on the effects of sulfur in regulating biological systems. The two fields are inter-related because the new understanding of the thiosulfoxide bond helps to explain the newfound roles of sulfur in biology. This review examines the nature of thiosulfoxide (sulfane, S0) sulfur, the history of its regulatory role, its generation in biological systems, and its functions in cells. The functions include synthesis of cofactors (molybdenum cofactor, iron-sulfur clusters), sulfuration of tRNA, modulation of enzyme activities, and regulating the redox environment by several mechanisms (including the enhancement of the reductive capacity of glutathione). A brief review of the analogous form of selenium suggests that the toxicity of selenium may be due to over-reduction caused by the powerful reductive activity of glutathione perselenide.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Sulfur atoms with valence 0 or -1 are called sulfane sulfur and are present not only in S8 but also in polysulfide, polythionate and other sulfur compounds.
“These sulfur atoms with valence 0 or -1 are called sulfane sulfur and are present not only in S8 but also in polysulfide, polythionate and other sulfur compounds [43,45].”
From On the chemical biology of the nitrite/sulfide interaction (2015) · cites this paper as [45]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 133 · Cited by 173
- Authors
- Toohey, J., & Cooper, A.
- Affiliations
- Cytoregulation Research, Elgin, ON K0G1E0, Canada
- New York Medical College (US)
- Corresponding author
- Toohey, John
- ORCID
- Cooper, Arthur
- Venue
- Molecules
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2014-08-21
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 12789-12813
- ISSN
- 1420-3049 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4170951
- OpenAlex
- W1966039102
- Cited by
- 173
- References
- 133
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 4
- FWCI
- 1.43
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Molecules (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Touro Scholar (Touro College) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Touro Scholar (Touro College) (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R01 DK 16739, R01DK016739)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Biochemistry › Sulfur Compounds in Biology
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Redox biology and oxidative stress
- Physical Sciences › Chemistry › Organic Chemistry › Sulfur-Based Synthesis Techniques
- Keywords
- sulfane sulfur, sulfur bonding, hypervalent sulfur, molybdenum cofactor, iron-sulfur clusters, enzyme activity modulation, glutathione, redox regulation, selenium toxicity
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Antioxidants, Humans, Oxidation-Reduction, Sulfoxides, Biosynthetic Pathways
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
