Ambient particulate matter (PM) can cause adverse health effects via their ability to produce reactive oxygen species (ROS). Humic-like substances (HULIS), a complex mixture of amphiphilic organic compounds, have been demonstrated to contain the majority of redox activity in the water-extractable organic fraction of PM. Reduced organic nitrogen compounds, such as alkaloids resulting from biomass burning emissions, are among HULIS constituents. In this study, we examined the redox activities of pyridine, imidazole and their alkyl derivatives using a cell-free dithiothreitol (DTT) assay under simulated physiological conditions (37 degrees C, pH = 7.40). These compounds were found to have little redox activity on their own as measured by the DTT assay, but they enhanced ROS generation catalyzed by 1,4-naphthoquinone (as a model quinone compound) and HULIS isolated from multiple aerosol samples. The enhancement effect by the individual nitrogen-containing bases was determined to be proportional to their amount in the assay solutions. It is postulated that the underlying mechanism involves the unprotonated N atom acting as a H-bonding acceptor to facilitate hydrogen-atom transfer in the ROS generation cycle. The enhancement capability was found to increase with their basicity (i.e., pK(a) of their conjugated acids, BH+), consistent with the proposed mechanism for enhancement. Among the imidazole homologues, a linear relationship was observed between the enhancement factors (in log scale) of the unprotonated form of the imidazole compounds (B) and the pK(a) of their conjugated acids (BH+). This relationship predicts that the range of alkylimidazole homologues (C-6-C-13) observed in atmospheric HULIS would be 1.5-4.4 times more effective than imidazole in facilitating HULIS-mediated ROS generation. Our work reveals that the ability of atmospheric PM organics to catalyze generation of ROS in cells could be affected by coexisting redox inactive organic constituents and suggests further work deploying multiple assays be conducted to quantify redox capabilities and enhancement effects of the HULIS components.
