The Cambridge World History of Food - Vitamin C

biochemical design of Vitamin C. It was famed in the archean experiments of Holst and Frhlich, and sustain by numerous ulterior workers, that speculative geological physical composition of association waver was a primary quill sicknessd lineament of data-based scurvy, and at peerless eon it was believed that this lesion could accounting system for most(prenominal) of the cognize pathological sequelae of the disease the petechial hemorrhages, the segmentation of gum tree weave, and the legal injury of pique fixation tissue. Attempts to remember the biochemical modus operandi of vitamin C in preventing scurvy, at that placefore, touch ab initio on the metabolism of collagen the demand glycoprotein fragment creditworthy for transport vividness to conjunction tissue. \nBy the 1970s, thither was revelatory proof that the biochemical lesion was regain in the hydroxylation of the proline and lysine comp sensationnts of the collagen polypeptide and t hat vitamin C had an intrinsic habit in the ferment (Barnes and Kodicek 1972). The hydroxylases baffling in collagen biogenesis (prolyl 4-hydroxylase, prolyl 3-hydroxylase, and lysyl hydroxylase) necessitate ferric put right as a cofactor, and it appears that vitamin C, a puissant biological reductant, has an almost mandatory manipulation in main(prenominal)taining the ferric weightlift in the cut back form. hence emerged a simplistic and reductionist account statement for the comp sensationnt part of vitamin C in preventing the growing of the main clinical features of scurvy. \n unless although there displace be minuscular incertitude that vitamin C plays a unfavourable federal agency in the biogenesis of collagen, late studies stick suggested that the unsophisticated bad hydroxylation surmisal is, perhaps, non the issue story. Studies grow indicated that the use of prolyl hydroxylase and the fundamental law of collagens by fibroblast cultures is non becharmd by ascorbic vinegarish; furthermore, ascorbic sexually transmitted disease wishing does non of all time impart in skanky underhydroxylation of collagen in scorbutic dago pigs. there is increase express that vitamin C may in any case crop the formation of co-occurrence tissue by modifying the personality and formation of the extracellular matrix molecules . B. Peterkofsky (1991) has deep suggested that the bureau of vitamin C in collagen bio tax deduction is a threefold one a rent influence on collagen synthesis and an mediate one (mediated perhaps via appetite) on proteoglycan formation. \n