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Vitamins: An evolutionary perspective

  • Section I: Physiological And Therapeutic Aspect
  • Published:
Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease

Abstract

Access to vitamins and the genetic endowment to utilize them maintain vitamin-dependent metabolic homeostasis in heterotrophs. Whereas the extent of adverse nutritional experiences has declined in modern human societies, phenocopies of deficiency diseases persist; accordingly, they have high heritability. The “vitamin-responsive hereditary metabolic diseases” identify DNA that specifies conserved apoenzyme domains interacting with coenzyme and the cellular processes providing access to coenzymes. Could heterozygosity at those loci also be a determinant of disease (or health) under certain circumstances?

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This is publication No. 85009 from the McGill University-Montreal Children's Hospital Research Institute

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Scriver, C.R. Vitamins: An evolutionary perspective. J Inherit Metab Dis 8 (Suppl 1), 2–7 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01800651

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