Secret of how plants regulate their vitamin C production revealed

Professor Roger Hellens, working with Dr William Laing from New Zealand’s Plant and Food Research, has discovered the mechanism plants use to regulate the levels of Vitamin C in each of their cells in response to the environment.

“Understanding these mechanisms may help in plant breeding programs to produce hardier plant crops and improve human health because iron deficiency anemia is the most common form of malnutrition worldwide,” Professor Hellens said.

“This discovery will also help us to understand why some plants such as the Kakadu plum are able to accumulate super-high levels of vitamin C.

“We humans gradually lost the ability to produce our own vitamin C thousands of years ago because it was so abundant in our hominid ancestors’ largely fruit diet.

“As we know, fruit can be higher in vitamin C than leafy vegetables so we can now study why fruit is so high and why some fruits make huge amounts.”

Professor Hellens said plants responded to factors in the environment like extreme light or drought by producing vitamin C, a powerful antioxidant, to protect themselves from damage.

“Each cell assesses whether it should produce more of the antioxidant which would absorb the energy from the high levels of light or stop the damaging oxidative process in amount the a dehydrated plant.

“In vitamin C regulation it is the ascorbate molecules which interact with a critical enzyme in the biochemical pathways to make vitamin C. Plants can move the level of ascorbic acid between cells as needed.”

Professor Hellens said plants had two ways to regulate cell processes.

“One way is during transcription when DNA is turned into the messenger molecule RNA, the molecule that distinguishes cells into different types of tissue. The second way is to regulate while turning RNA into an enzyme that makes vitamin C.

“So if a cell wants to increase its level of vitamin C it’s generally got two ways to do it — and we’ve discovered vitamins C uses the second method, and in an unexpected way.

“We discovered it’s not whether the cell is making the RNA but whether the RNA is converted into a protein that is the deciding mechanism.

“It’s very interesting because we found it was the level of vitamin C itself in each cell that decides whether RNA turns into the protein which makes vitamin C.

 

Source: Science Daily

N.H.Khider

You might also like
Latest news
UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Syria: Reports about United Nations evacuating all its s... Army General Command: The Syrian people are facing systematic media and terrorist war aiming at dest... Syrian Army Eliminates large numbers of Terrorists, destroys dozens of their vehicles in northern Ho... Presidency of the Republic: President Al-Assad is assuming his work, national and constitutional dut... Lavrov: Russia, Iran, Turkey agreed on facilitating the stopping of military operations in Syria, st... Iran reaffirms ongoing support for Syrian people, government Russian and Iraqi foreign ministers discuss situation in Syria and its serious impacts on the region... Damascus International Airport operating at full capacity, news about stopping operations is not tru... The Russian "Roads of Glory - Our History" movement condems the terrorist organizations' attack on S... Baghaei: Allegations about the evacuation of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus are not true 27 martyrs in Israeli occupation massacres in Gaza A statement by the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces Joint statement of the foreign ministers of Syria, Iraq and Iran: "Threatening Syria’s security enda... Friends of UN Charter condemn terrorist attacks in Syria Foreign Ministers of Syria, Iraq and Iran hold joint press conference on the situation in Syria Iraqi President reaffirms need to preserve Syria's unity and sovereignty Israeli occupation forces raid Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza, force medical staff and patients to lea... The Syrian Army eliminates dozens of terrorists in Hama countryside Lavrov: Information indicates the United States, Britain support terrorist groups in northern Syria Fayyadh: Syria’s security cannot be separated from Iraq’s