BIOL 233 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Tocopherol, Niacin, Cardiovascular Disease
25 Dec 2020
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Vitamin: play crucial roles in regulating the chemical reactions that allow us to extract energy from those nutrients; organic compounds essential for normal function, growth, and maintenance of the body. Vitamins are individual units rather than long chains of smaller units. Provitamin (vitamin precursor ) : inactive forms of vitamins that the body can convert into active usable forms. Retinoids: compounds in foods that have chemical structures similar to vitamin a. Retinoids include the active forms of vitamin a (retinol, retinal, retinoic acid) and the main storage forms of retinol (retinyl esters) Many of these compounds are precursors of vitamin a. Carotenoids: a group of yellow, orange, and red pigments in plants, including foods. Beta-carotene: yellow-orange pigment can be cleaved into two molecules of retinal and thus has the highest potential vitamin a activity of the provitamin a family. Antioxidant: a substance that combines with or otherwise neutralizes a free radical, thus preventing oxidative damage to cells and tissues.
