EPR Detection of Nitrosylated Compounds : Introduction with some Historical Background

Considered for a long time as a simple chemical of great industrial importance, then in turn as a poison and a pollutant, more recently as an important endogenous and ubiquitous gas in mammals, possibly as a “miraculous” gas to use in neonatal intensive care units, etc., nitric oxide has become as fascinating a molecule as molecular oxygen. The main difference between the two gases lies in the facts that we breathe air from our first cry at birth and have some culture-based understanding of air breathing, while the understanding of the various biological roles of NO, such as in the opening of the bronchial alveoles that precedes the first cry of the neonate, is still in its infancy. We think it interesting to hint at the various sources of NO on earth.