Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Octopamine

Octopamine

einstein(not) - 10-6-2009 at 14:11

Is there any intresting chemistry to had with octopamine?

panziandi - 10-6-2009 at 15:17

Well, I'm going out on a limb here BUT... I suppose by "interesting chemistry" you mean to say something more along the lines of "can I make money from chemistry on octopamine" ... Well it's not your obvious candidate for a meth lab but then again drug cooks jump at anything remotely resembling a phenethylamine! Your "harmless" because you haven't got the brains to stick a few groups onto your octopamine skeleton?

You can methylate the OH and the NH and oxidise the alcohol to ketone and reduce to alkane would give you p-methoxyphenyl-N-methylethylamine...

BTW... your name is quite apt.

Is it just me or is this forum gradually being overtaken by (I would say bees but i think Acarapis woodi, bee mites, is more appropriate, being parasitic and all)...

Other than that! I can't think of much INTERESTING chemistry that could be done with you biogenic amine.

[Edited on 10-6-2009 by panziandi]

kclo4 - 10-6-2009 at 15:59

Perhaps with bromination after the amine is protected or something you could make a 3,4,5-trimethoxy compound of some sort?

It could also be used for weight lose, though it may not work.

einstein(not) - 10-6-2009 at 18:12

Quote: Originally posted by panziandi

Well, I'm going out on a limb here BUT... I suppose by "interesting chemistry" you mean to say something more along the lines of "can I make money from chemistry on octopamine"

Well you suppose wrong! The reason I ask is because I noticed 2000gr. of this on ebay and after doing a quick search here I found no refrences to it. It is a compund that I'm not familiar with so I thought I would present it here for general specualtion on it's uses. Chemistry is a hobby for me and sure as hell not profitable. I've spent hundreds of dollars on my hobby and never once received a dimes return on my investment. I have boxes of broken glassware and buckets of wasted chemicals and still never once been tempted to recoup my losses by manufacturing. However if I had a dollar for everytime someone asked me to I would be considerably closer to breaking even. Did you even consider that if meth was my goal I would have been more likely to post on WD?

Quote: Originally posted by panziandi

Well it's not your obvious candidate for a meth lab but then again drug cooks jump at anything remotely resembling a phenethylamine!

You seem to know much more about that than I do.

Quote: Originally posted by panziandi

Your "harmless" because you haven't got the brains to stick a few groups onto your octopamine skeleton?

For someone who went out on a limb with your assumptions you certainly resorted to personal attacks.

Quote: Originally posted by panziandi

You can methylate the OH and the NH and oxidise the alcohol to ketone and reduce to alkane would give you p-methoxyphenyl-N-methylethylamine...

That sounds "intresting"...

Quote: Originally posted by panziandi

BTW... your name is quite apt.

I suppose you would prefer something more arrogant.

Quote: Originally posted by panziandi

Is it just me or is this forum gradually being overtaken by (I would say bees but i think Acarapis woodi, bee mites, is more appropriate, being parasitic and all)...

Seems to me there is alot more grasping at straws and jumping to uninformed conclusions to make accusations than anything else. I've seen it happen here between members who unlike me are not "harmless". I for one am sick and tired of everyone thinking that chemistry is always about drugs. I'm a 46 year old well respected member of my community who happens to have an intrest that's outside the mainstream. I could throw tons of money into racing, boating, drinking, cheating, gambling or gardening and nobody would raise an eyebrow. But let people find out you play with chemicals in your spare time and the first thing they think is "Drugs" or "Bombs". I guess it's to be expected from people who aren't even aware of chemistry as a hobby. However I should be able to come here and not get the same mindset. I shouldn't have to preface everything with "I'm not a meth cook" or "I'm not a terrorist", as if that wouldn't reinforce someones prejudice. I should and do expect better here.
Now on to my next post.
Any intresting chemistry to be had with p-methoxyphenyl-N-methylethylamine
Thanks panziandi

sparkgap - 10-6-2009 at 22:01

Quote: Originally posted by einstein(not)

The reason I ask is because I noticed 2000gr. of this on ebay and after doing a quick search here I found no refrences to it. It is a compund that I'm not familiar with so I thought I would present it here for general specualtion on it's uses.

Well, the only mistake you made SFAICT is that you didn't mention this in your very first post. Too many k3w15/cooks have already visited this forum that questions about pharmaceuticals such as these, without even a tiny bit of explanatory background, are treated very derisively.

In any event, it's an adrenergic agonist; less technically, this means it acts a wee bit similar to adrenaline. As to chemical modification... I see no reason for the average amateur to start with this compound.

sparky (~_~)

Nicodem - 10-6-2009 at 23:47

There is nothing wrong in asking question about pharmaceuticals, not even if the question is related to illegal drugs or whatever, as long as it is done using scientific discourse. And this is the only thing where Einstein(not) miserably failed. Yet he receives accusations not for what he failed, but due to ridiculous insinuations that he might be a greedy drug cook or a kewl. First of all, octopamine can not be reasonably used to make any drug having any value on the black market, therefore these insinuations are just as ridiculous as his referenceless lazy ass one line question asking other's opinion about something as subjective as "interesting chemistry". Einstein(not), please first define what "interesting chemistry" means and then all the others stay on that topic!

Einstein(not), referenceless one line questions go either in the Short questions thread or to the Beginnings section. Therefore I'm moving this thread to Beginnings.

JohnWW - 11-6-2009 at 00:00

Octopamine is a biogenic amine that is closely related to noradrenaline, and has noradrenergic and dopaminergic effects, having properties both of a hormone and a neurotransmitter. It is sold as a body-building and fat-loss nutritional supplement. For further info on it and its uses, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopamine
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/octo.htm
http://www.1fast400.com/i56_Octopamine.html
http://www.mondofacto.com/facts/dictionary?octopamine

einstein(not) - 11-6-2009 at 01:58

Yes it was a lazy ass question. Hell I didn't even google it otherwise I would have seen the wiki entry. To be honest I didn't even look at the name that closely. I was thinking octanamine. Probably because I recently read a synthesis for nitrooctane at orgsyn.org and still had octane on my mind. I only had a few minutes between getting home from work and going out to eat so I was in a hurry. And yes intresting is subjective but that's why I chose it. Since my goal was to spark speculation I left it open to individual interpetation. I also wanted to be the first to bring up a compound not previously mentioned here. Maybe that would get me promoted from harmless to nusiance.

[Edited on 11-6-2009 by einstein(not)]

[Edited on 11-6-2009 by einstein(not)]

panziandi - 11-6-2009 at 05:58

Well einstein(not) when I saw your post I quickly googled the compound, once I had the image it doesn't take an Einstein to work out that it is very similar in deed to the phenethylamine skeleton, in fact the tyrosol skeleton is a very important unit in biochemistry, many of the health benefits of olive oil are attributed to tyrosol-based compounds. I then, before making accustaions, checked what threads you have been active in, quite a restricted bunch, making me assume.

As an amateur chemist myself I would rather make octopamine (as a challenge) over buying 2kg of a compound I see very limited use for.

I will not apologise to you for my assumption and reply, because in all fairness you gave no hints at all to why you asked the question or what "interesting chemistry" you were after. Had you googled the compound, found an image of the compound or an IUPAC name for it to include in your post, along with something like "I have the opportunity to purchase this compound to experiment with, can anybody think of anything to do with it" may have revealed some politer reply on my behalf.

EXPERIMENTS YOU COULD DO:
1) as a primary amine you could alkylate, as with the phenol group
2) you could oxidise the secondary alcohol to a keton (or esterify or alkylate)
3) you could hit the arene ring with alkylation, nitration, sulphonation, halogenation

However if I were you, I would figure out a method of making octopamine since this would be more enjoyable and rewarding I suspect.

I for one do not see chemistry as a hobby = drug cook / terrorist and am 110% anti-chemophobia (as you would see had my site been up and running and you could have read my rant on chemophobia). And when I tell people I do chemistry as a hobby they usually either say "drugs?" or they say "oh... cool... like what?".

In future, a polite remark, be more specific in your posts, try to research your interests and then ask questions based on what you have (or haven't) managed to find in the literature/www. It will avoid your posts looking like those of a lazy ass cook and more like a well respected member of the community who happens to have an interest in chemsitry who isn't lazy but just overly exited by his finds on ebay.

good luck

(BTW, I don't think there is much chemistry one would do with p-methoxyphenyl-N-methylethylamine

)

Nicodem - 11-6-2009 at 23:19

Einstein(not), given that you refused to define the extremely subjective term "interesting chemistry" without it there can be no further discussion, I take it that you decided to retreat from this topic. I hope this is not due to the bad start this thread received (which was your own fault anyway). You should not step back for such reasons (you live and learn until you die, so making mistakes is expected).

Octopamine can be used as a model starting material for several reactions. For example, me personally, I find heterocyclic chemistry interesting, suitable particularly for beginners since the products are often nicely crystallizable products which makes isolation easy. There are several heterocyclic condensations you can do with octopamine due to it being an beta-aminoalcohol. For example it can be made into its imidazolidinone or 2-imino-oxazolidine by simple reactions using simple reagents. I'm confident these reactions and products are described in the literature so you can check if you were successful by simple analytical means like taking the melting point.

Paddywhacker - 12-6-2009 at 02:15

That's 2000 mg on ebay, not 2000 g.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/2000mg-2g-OCTOPAMINE-HCl-research-che...

einstein(not) - 12-6-2009 at 07:41

Quote: Originally posted by Paddywhacker

That's 2000 mg on ebay, not 2000 g.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/2000mg-2g-OCTOPAMINE-HCl-research-che...

As you can see I was in such a hurry I didn't even get the amount right.

Yes Nicodem I wish had never posted. Not only was it something completely different than I thought but it was an amount so small that anyone might conclude its obvious use to be as a precursor. I intend to research it more this weekend. Hopefully I can find something intresting enough so that perhaps everyone time wasn't completely wasted with this post.

Intresting to me would be for example the reaction between hexamine and HCL as opposed to say calcium nitrate and sulfuric acid. Yes both result in simple products but the mechanisms involved in the hexamine reaction is much more intresting to me. Please consider that I haven't had time to research the compound other than to look at its structure on wiki. Keeping that in mind I would find cleavage or rearangement reaction much more intresting than a substitution. But then again I usually find those reactions more intresting. I suppose I wouldn't feel that way if my goal was process economics rather than basic learning.

[Edited on 12-6-2009 by einstein(not)]