What do vitamins do? Do microbes need vitamins?
In: 10
For the first part of the question (what they do):
They do various things, vitamin is not a functional category. Vitamin A for example is a raw material that is transformed into vision pigment in the eye, but it also helps turning on some genes in the bone marrow that help making immune cells. Meaning that vitamin A deficiency causes both sight impairment and immune problems.
Vitamin C is a cofactor of different enzymes (meaning it helps the enzymes to work). These enzymes are mostly involved in tissue regeneration and connective tissue build-up. That’s why vitamin C deficiency comes with loosen tissues all over the body that comes in a form of skin lesions, week gums that can’t hold the teeth, not healing wounds etc.
As you see vitamins may have different functions and their deficiency causes different problems.
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