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Looks interesting.....
and far more serious than the marketing hype supplements seen on TV
The cells in your body are cluttered with trash - unneeded or abnormal stuff that can make you sick or even kill you. Fortunately, nature has provided each cell with its own garbage-disposal system to get rid of dangerous junk.
A crew of 76 chemical agents acts like tiny janitors, prowling the innards of a cell and tagging waste materials so other minuscule cleanup workers can find and destroy them.
Researchers at many laboratories are discovering details about this ingenious process, in hopes that their findings will lead to new treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other diseases.
This waste-disposal apparatus is known as the ubiquitin system because it's ubiquitous, meaning everywhere. An almost identical process is found in most living organisms, from microbes, flies and worms to trees and whales..
Ubiquitin (pronounced you-BICK-wit-in) is a small protein, consisting of 76 amino acids - chemical compounds made mostly of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen.
Here's how the removal process works:
First, ubiquitin recognizes the shape of a damaged, badly folded or incorrectly assembled protein. For example, a little piece of a protein may "become loose and flop around in the breeze," Keith Wilkinson, a biochemist at Emory University in Atlanta, said in a telephone interview. "That's a signal to send it off to be degraded."
Once it spots a flawed protein, ubiquitin attaches itself to the target, like a forester tagging a tree for removal. Usually several copies of ubiquitin chain themselves together and gang up on the victim.
The execution is carried out by a separate complex structure called a proteasome, a hollow cylinder composed of four rings of proteins stacked on top of each other like doughnuts. The cylinder is closed on both ends by protein lids, leaving a cage-like space inside. This space is the death chamber where the doomed protein is broken up.
Source : Johns Hopkins University
and far more serious than the marketing hype supplements seen on TV
The cells in your body are cluttered with trash - unneeded or abnormal stuff that can make you sick or even kill you. Fortunately, nature has provided each cell with its own garbage-disposal system to get rid of dangerous junk.
A crew of 76 chemical agents acts like tiny janitors, prowling the innards of a cell and tagging waste materials so other minuscule cleanup workers can find and destroy them.
Researchers at many laboratories are discovering details about this ingenious process, in hopes that their findings will lead to new treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other diseases.
This waste-disposal apparatus is known as the ubiquitin system because it's ubiquitous, meaning everywhere. An almost identical process is found in most living organisms, from microbes, flies and worms to trees and whales..
Ubiquitin (pronounced you-BICK-wit-in) is a small protein, consisting of 76 amino acids - chemical compounds made mostly of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen.
Here's how the removal process works:
First, ubiquitin recognizes the shape of a damaged, badly folded or incorrectly assembled protein. For example, a little piece of a protein may "become loose and flop around in the breeze," Keith Wilkinson, a biochemist at Emory University in Atlanta, said in a telephone interview. "That's a signal to send it off to be degraded."
Once it spots a flawed protein, ubiquitin attaches itself to the target, like a forester tagging a tree for removal. Usually several copies of ubiquitin chain themselves together and gang up on the victim.
The execution is carried out by a separate complex structure called a proteasome, a hollow cylinder composed of four rings of proteins stacked on top of each other like doughnuts. The cylinder is closed on both ends by protein lids, leaving a cage-like space inside. This space is the death chamber where the doomed protein is broken up.
Source : Johns Hopkins University
