Copyright © 1996, 1997, 2001 by Galen Daryl
Knight and VitaleTherapeutics, Inc.
Modified Riboflavin is not User Friendly
A comparison of the biological activities of various flavin analogues with
vitamin B2 (riboflavin) indicates that modifying this structure results
in compounds that often lack nutritional benefit and even interfere with
the desirable biological activities of riboflavin. Riboflavin has a ribityl
(ribose sugar) moiety attached to position 10 instead of the methyl group
present in lumiflavin. Although lumichrome
is a fragment of riboflavin produced in response to visible and ultraviolet
radiation under physiological (neutral or acid) conditions, the fragment
produced by alkaline irradiation (lumiflavin) is shown since it more
closely resembles riboflavin, and its phenothiazine
and phenarsazine analogues.
GO TO: