Enzyme discovery sheds light on vitamin D
Date: 30.7.2007
Surprising findings by Queen’s researchers have shed new light on how the “sunshine vitamin” D – increasingly used to treat and prevent cancer and other diseases – is broken down by our bodies.
First observed in Dr. Jones’s lab by undergraduate Biochemistry student Brendan O’Leary, the discovery reveals that changing a single amino acid in the hydroxylase enzyme will cause it to take a completely different pathway. Although scientists have known for 25 years that the enzyme is capable of taking two different pathways, until now they could not explain why this occurs.
"Queen's University News Center":[ http://qnc.queensu.ca/story_loader.php?id=46a644ef2b3ec]
