I’m working out. I need to eat proteins. So I eat things like meat and beans. But who makes the proteins first and how? Why can’t I make them myself?
In: Biology
Proteins are big molecules that are made up of smaller molecules called amino acids. Your body cells are always needing specific proteins because they do all sorts of different things depending on their shape – replicate DNA, act as enzymes to catalyze reactions, carry around other molecules, act as structural elements in cells, and of course, form the primary structure of muscle cells.
Since the body needs specific proteins it doesn’t bother actually using the proteins you get in food. Instead they’re broken down into amino acids during digestion and then re-assembled into the proteins you need. The body can synthesize amino acids – which is where all the proteins in the food chain came from at some point; some plant or animal sythesized the amino acids and made them into proteins – but there are some amino acids that humans either don’t synthesize or don’t synthesize at a sufficient rate and are so called ‘essential’ because getting them in your diet is important. Plants can synthesize all these amino acids, but animals evolved not to because they can just eat plants to get them and it wasn’t worth the energy.
So to answer your question: plants, ultimately. And animals to some extent
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