Function
A balance of magnesium is vital to the well being of all organisms. Magnesium is a relatively abundant ion in the lithosphere and is highly bioavailable in the hydrosphere. This availability, in combination with a useful and very unusual chemistry, may have led to its usefulness in evolution as an ion for signaling, enzyme activation and catalysis. However, the unusual nature of ionic magnesium has also led to a major challenge in the use of the ion in biological systems. Biological membranes are impermeable to magnesium (and other ions) so transport proteins must facilitate the flow of magnesium, both into and out of cells and intracellular compartments.
Read more about this topic: Magnesium In Biology
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The mother’s and father’s attitudes toward the child correspond to the child’s own needs.... Mother has the function of making him secure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“The press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart and democracy itself cannot function without the essential exchange of information. Creative leaks, a discreet lunch, interchange in the Lobby, the art of the unattributable telephone call, late at night.”
—Howard Brenton (b. 1942)