In article <94162.141941MISENERS at QUCDN.QueensU.CA>, Stephen Misener <MISENERS at QUCDN.QueensU.CA> writes:
|> I'm interested in everyone's opinion on the statements I'm about to
|> make...they are not based on a great deal of thought or research...
|>|> 1. The biosynthetic pathways for non-essential amino acids have been
|> maintained principally because these amino acids have some important
|> biological role (besides prot. synthesis) ... classic eg. glutamic acid
|>|> or...if that is too simplistic a view
|>|>|> 2. Amino acids with important biological roles (besides prot. syn) MUST
|> have metabolic pathways conserved in order to maintain their
|> endogenous concentrations.
|>|> So...if this is true...then it is impossible / unlikely that a required
|> amino acid could function in an important regulatory role...like
|> neurotransmission for example.
|>|> I'm unlikely to be the first to propose this...and it may be blatantly
|> obvious to everyone...or complete crap...but I've never run accross an
|> explanation as to why some aa's are essential and others not...so I
|> thought I would throw this out to the metabol-reg group and see what
|> happens...
|>
Both your proposals are complete crap. "Essential" amino acids are those
that people can't synthesize for themselves, but plants can. We don't
bother having synthetic mechanisms for all the AAs for the same reason
that we don't bother having a synthetic mechanism for glucose (from CO2,
that is)--it's perfectly easy just to eat plants, letting them do all
the work.
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John Kuszewski || |/ /| ||
johnk at spasm.niddk.nih.gov || / /|| ||
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that's MISTER protein G to you! |/__/| |
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