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 animals, plants and/or animals:
“We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.”
—A.J. (Arnold Joseph)
“Probably if our lives were more conformed to nature, we should not need to defend ourselves against her heats and colds, but find her our constant nurse and friend, as do plants and quadrupeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair left after plastering and of brown paper; for even the wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive the winter only because they are so careful to secure them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)