Word: phosphoryl
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...body's catalysts) is essential for the transmission of nerve impulses. Trying to learn more about cholinesterase, Biochemist Irwin B. Wilson discovered that nerve gases (and certain insecticides) cause death by adding to the nerve cell's cholinesterase something that damages it. The something is a phosphoryl that destroys the nerves' ability to transmit impulses to muscles...
Armed with this knowledge, Dr. Wilson tried several known compounds as antidotes. They did not work fast or well enough, so he and a research team set out to design a completely new compound that would reactivate cholinesterase by getting close to the phosphoryl group and removing it from the cell's protein. PAM got its test when hundreds of mice were exposed to one of the most deadly nerve gases, then given shots of the compound. The results, reported the researchers, were "dramatic and certain." Not a mouse died. Since protein structure is the same in humans...
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