• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.1306-1310
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• 2006

Sphingomonas sp. strain SB5 could degrade carbofuran and carbofuran-7-phenol to a hydrolytic product, 2-hydroxy-3-(3-methlypropan-2-o1)phenol, and several red metabolites. However, the chemical structures of the red metabolites have largely remained unidentified. In this study, we identified the structure of one of the red metabolites as 5-(2-hydroxy-2-methyl-propyl)-2,2-dimethyl- 2,3-dihydro-naphtho[2,3-6]furan-4,6,7,9-tetrone by using mass spectrometric and NMR ($^1$H, $^{13}$C) analyses. It is suggested that the red metabolite resulted from condensation of some metabolites in the degradation of 2-hydroxy-3-(3-methlypropan-2-o1)phenol, a hydrolytic product derived from carbofuran. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to report a red metabolite in bacterial degradation of the insecticide carbofuran.