Archive for the ‘DNA’ Category

Vitamin B12

Modern studies have shown that chronic shortage of vitamin B12 can lead to serious harms. This vitamin is essential to every cell in your body. The vitamin takes important part in the process in which your body makes the genetic material that comprises the cell nucleus.

Vitamin B12 is far more than a cheerleader in this process. It rolls up its sleeves and goes to work, helping to make the nucleic acids that are strung together like pearls to form DNA, the genetic e-mail system. It also helps make RNA, the copy of DNA that’s sent along to each cell.

Vitamin B12 also maintains the fatty sheath, called myelin, that surrounds and protects nerve fibers and promotes their normal growth, Dr. Pinto says. Like insulation around copper wires, this sheath allows your radiating network of nerves to send their electrical messages without short-circuiting. When B12 is missing, the myelin sheath breaks down, which eventually leads to nerve damage. Vitamin B deficiencies are one of the most common deficiencies with consequences for your mouth and teeth. Teeth whitening in Oxford is a good chance for your teeth to look great but don’t forget about vitamins as well.

Adults need approximately 0.0015 mg a day and if you eat meat, fish or dairy foods then you should be able to get enough vitamin B12 from your diet. All people who are keeping vegan diet might not get enough of this vitamin because vitamin B12 was not found in vegetable foods (such as fruit, vegetables and grains), but in all meat products and certain algae such as seaweed. Good sources include meat, salmon, cod, milk, cheese, eggs, yeast extract, and some fortified breakfast cereals.

DNA Secrets

No wonder that researchers around the world are working to understand the genetic base of common diseases to discover and develop new medicines that will help people to overcome genetic diseases.

RNA theory of the origin of life affirms that billion years ago the oceans on Earth had a lot of of RNA molecules floating around in them, making proteins, and also making new strands of RNA. But always breaking and making copies RNA molecules had some chacges in it neverending acting, it means that not of all cipies were exactly right, not the same as the original RNA molecule. Therefor there got to be a lot of different kinds of RNA molecules then as a result – a lot of different kinds of proteins. It’s might be good and at the same time not so because if you had a good healthy RNA molecule it was hard to copy it exactly.

Some of these RNA molecules evolved to make two sides to their spiral staircases instead of just one. These formed a double helix: two spirals twisting inside each other. It was a much more complicated kind of molecule, but it was much stronger, just as a ladder is stronger with two sides than with only one. These new molecules are called deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA for short. DNA stairs are made of two purines – adenine and guanine – and two pyramidines – thymine and cytosine.

When a DNA molecule needed to make a copy of itself, it had nowhere for the new purines to fasten on to. So it had to unzip itself, just like the zipper on your jacket, and then it could make some new molecules and then zip itself back up again.