ABSTRACT Many essential oils (EOs) of different plant species possess interesting antimicrobial effects on buccal bacteria and antioxidant properties. Eugenia klotzschiana Berg (pêra-do-cerrado, in Portuguese) is a species of Myrtaceae with restricted distribution in the Cerrado. The essential oils were extracted through the hydrodistillation technique using a modified Clevenger apparatus (2 hours) and chemically characterized by GC-MS. The major compounds were α-copaene (10.6 %) found in oil from leaves in natura, β-bisabolene (17.4 %) in the essential oil from dry leaves and α-(E)-bergamotene (29.9 %) in oil from flowers. The antioxidant activity of essential oils showed similarities in both methods under analysis (DPPH and ABTS˙+) and the results suggested moderate to high antioxidant activity. The antibacterial activity was evaluated by determining minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs), using the microdilution method. MIC values below 400 µg/mL were obtained against Streptococcus salivarius (200 µg/mL), S. mutans (50 µg/mL), S. mitis (200 µg/mL) and Prevotella nigrescens (50 µg/mL). This is the first report of the chemical composition and antibacterial and antioxidant activities of the essential oils of E. klotzschiana. These results suggest that E. klotzschiana, a Brazilian plant, provide initial evidence of a new and alternative source of substances with medicinal interest.

The choice of an appropriate background electrolyte (BGE) and its components for capillary electrophoresis analysis is the main step in capillary electrophoresis method development. The use of an inadequate co-ion component could lead to asymmetrical peaks and selecting an inappropriate counter-ion could affect the buffer capacity and the pH of the BGE, leading to unreliable analysis. In this paper, we describe a systematic procedure for the development of a capillary electrophoresis method, based on the effect of varying pH on the ion effective mobility, to optimize the BGE composition. The method was applied to the separation of L-ascorbic acid in different samples. The optimized background electrolyte composition was 40 mmol L-1 tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane and 20 mmol L-1 2-morpholinoethanesulfonic acid, at pH 8.1. Sorbic acid was used as the internal standard and separation was carried out in a fused-silica capillary (32 cm total length and 8.5 cm effective length, 50 µm inner diameter), with a short-end-injection configuration and direct ultraviolet (UV) detection at 266 nm. The separation was performed in 26 s. The method shows good linearity (R2 > 0.999), excellent values for inter-day and intra-day precision and good recovery (in the range of 94-107%). The values obtained for limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) were 0.14 and 41 mg L-1, respectively. The systematic procedure applied shows to be a very useful tool for the first step method development for capillary electrophoresis.

The synthesis and reactivity of α-oxoketenes dithioacetals (S,S-acetals), general structure [(R¹C=OC(R²)=C(SR³)(SR4)], are reported. We also showed the application of S,S acetals as synthons for efficient synthesis of isoxazoles, pyrazoles, indazoles, thiophenes, dithiol thiones, pyridines, pyrimidines and other heterocycles. This work aims to review the importance of α-oxoketenes dithioacetals in organic chemistry during the past few years.