In order to fully
understand the mechanisms of human physiology, it is important to have an
understanding of the chemical composition of the body but since this will take
pages and pages, it is beyond the scope of this blog. For the time being let us remember the
following. The human body is a complex
piece of machinery and all these are kept running by a large number of small
moving parts. At the center of all those
moving parts are molecules, the smallest of atoms that perform a function. At any point of time, all sorts of
complicated processes is going on in your body, and a lot of them are carried
out by incredibly powerful molecules.
Here we are going to talk about the five of the molecules that keep you
ticking.
Deoxyribonucleic acid,
or DNA,
is the only largest molecule in our human body and it is utilized every time
our body produces a new cell, which it does two trillion times a day.
Pepsin is an enzyme
responsible for digesting proteins in food and breaking them down into amino
acids.
Hemoglobin, a protein found in red
blood cells, is tasked with the life or death responsibility and carries oxygen
from the lungs to the body’s tissues and returns carbon dioxide from the
tissues back to the lungs.
Adenosine triphosphate,
or ATP,
is not technically considered a macromolecule because it is small, but it has
an important role to play in the human body. In fact, when it comes to the
release of energy within the body, there’s no molecule more important than ATP.
Cholesterol is often tied to an
increased risk for cardiovascular issues, such a heart attack or stroke.
However, it is also responsible for producing hormones and chemical messengers
that regulate processes that don’t need to happen all the time.
cont’d..
