Sulfur Use By Plants and Animals
Plants take up sulfate in their roots and reduce it to sulfide (see sulfur assimilation). Plants are able to reduce APS directly to sulfite (using APS reductase) without phosphorylating APS to PAPS. From the sulfide they form the amino acids cysteine and methionine, sulfur lipids, and other sulfur compounds. Animals obtain sulfur from cysteine and methionine in the protein that they consume. Sulfur is the third most abundant mineral element in the body. The amino acids cysteine and methionine are used by the body to make glutathione. Excess cysteine and methionine are oxidized to sulfate by sulfite oxidase, eliminated in the urine, or stored as glutathione (which can serve as a store for sulfur). The lack of sulfite oxidase, known as sulfite oxidase deficiency, causes physical deformities, mental retardation, and death.
Read more about this topic: Sulfur Metabolism
Famous quotes containing the words plants and/or animals:
“The holly and the ivy
Are plants that are well known
Of all the trees that grow in the woods
The holly bears the crown.”
—Unknown. The Holly and the Ivy (l. 1–4)
“Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut [animals] up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph.... “Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?””
—Colette [Sidonie Gabrielle Colette] (1873–1954)