What is the chemical structure for caffeine?
C8H10N4O2Caffeine / Formula
What type of structure is caffeine?
purine ring
Caffeine is made of heterocyclic rings, similar in structure to the purine ring. Its structure is similar to that of adenine (nucleobase found in DNA) and guanine (nucleobase found in DNA and RNA).
What is the mechanism of action of caffeine?
Caffeine action is thought to be mediated via several mechanisms: the antagonism of adenosine receptors, the inhibition of phosphodiesterase, the release of calcium from intracellular stores, and antagonism of benzodiazepine receptors (Myers et al., 1999).
How does caffeine structure relate to its function?
The caffeine molecule is structurally similar to the adenosine molecule, and is capable of binding to adenosine receptors on the surface of cells without activating them, thereby acting as a competitive inhibitor.
What is caffeine science?
Caffeine is a naturally occurring chemical stimulant called trimethylxanthine. Its chemical formula is C8H10N4O2 (see Erowid: Caffeine Chemistry for an image of the molecular structure). It is a drug, and actually shares a number of traits with more notorious drugs such as amphetamines, cocaine and heroin.
Is caffeine a typical alkaloid?
Caffeine is the most common purine alkaloid, but in a few plant species including cacao and unique Chinese tea plants, the main purine alkaloid is theobromine or methyluric acid (Ashihara and Crozier, 1999; Ashihara and Suzuki, 2004). A large amount of caffeine is found in coffee seeds (mainly in endosperms).
What functional groups are in caffeine?
The functional groups in caffeine are amine and amide.
What receptors does caffeine bind with?
Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychoactive drug. The only molecular targets for caffeine at nontoxic doses are the main adenosine receptors in the brain, namely the inhibitory A1 receptors (A1R) and the facilitatory A2A receptors (A2AR) (9).
Is caffeine ionic or covalent?
Thus all the bonds in caffeine and the related molecules are covalent and the bond lengths can be considered as sums of the atomic covalent radii.
Is caffeine an element or compound?
1,3,7-Trimethylpurine-2,6-dioneCaffeine / IUPAC ID