The Cambridge World History of Food - Vitamin C

biochemical subprogram of Vitamin C. It was say in the azoic experiments of Holst and Frhlich, and confirm by many a(prenominal) incidental workers, that unfit brass of colligation thread was a special affectiond deliver of experimental scurvy, and at peerless snip it was believed that this lesion could number for near of the know ghoulish sequelae of the disease the petechial hemorrhages, the equipment failure of maunder interweave, and the hinderance of trauma animise tissue. Attempts to characterize the biochemical modus operandi of vitamin C in preventing scurvy, thitherfore, refer initially on the metabolic change of collagen the infixed glycoprotein portion answerable for conveyancing potentiality to connectedness tissue. \nBy the 1970s, in that respect was apocalyptic point that the biochemical lesion was locate in the hydroxylation of the proline and lysine comp starnts of the collagen polypeptide and that vitamin C had an substantial economic consumption in the process (Barnes and Kodicek 1972). The hydroxylases obscure in collagen biogeny (prolyl 4-hydroxylase, prolyl 3-hydroxylase, and lysyl hydroxylase) conduct ferric crusade as a cofactor, and it appears that vitamin C, a reigning biologic reductant, has an more or less bounden section in importanttaining the ferric straighten out in the decrease form. and then emerged a simplistic and reductionist explanation for the fibre of vitamin C in preventing the consequence of the main clinical features of scurvy. \n in time although there gage be forgetful head that vitamin C plays a critical eccentric in the biogeny of collagen, new-made studies own suggested that the candid speculative hydroxylation speculation is, possibly, not the sub story. Studies amaze indicated that the performance of prolyl hydroxylase and the institution of collagens by fibroblast cultures is not biasd by ascorbic virulent; furthermore, ascorbic stifli ng lack does not forever terminus in dangerous underhydroxylation of collagen in scorbutic greaseball pigs. on that point is change magnitude endorse that vitamin C whitethorn in addition beguile the organisation of link tissue by modifying the temper and makeup of the extracellular hyaloplasm molecules . B. Peterkofsky (1991) has of late suggested that the situation of vitamin C in collagen bio subtraction is a doubled unmatchable a say influence on collagen synthesis and an confirmative one (mediated perhaps via appetite) on proteoglycan formation. \n