Preksha Dhyana Human Body Part 2

Author(s): Jethalal S Zaveri
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 28

Lipids (Fats): Although one does not like to be 'fatty', fats and other fatty substances also do play some valuable roles in the body. Fat-deposits serve as a source of reserve energy. Gram for gram, fats yield more than twice as many calories as carbohydrates and are thus a more economical means of energy-storage. They play an important role in maintaining normal cell permeability and thus regulate the flow of materials into and out of cells. They aid in transport of fat soluble vitamins.
Proteins : There are about 100,000 different kinds of proteins in the human body. Human proteins differ from those of other species and there are differences from one person to another. They are formed by linking together of smaller units called amino acids. Some are huge with molecular weight in the millions of moles. There are about twenty naturally occurring amino acids.
Next to water, proteins are the most abundant substances in most cells, forming 10 to 20 percent of the cellmass. Most of them can be grouped in one of the two main classes : (i) structural proteins and (ii) functional proteins.
Structural proteins are present in cell membranes and hold the cell-structure together. Most of them are in the form of long fibrous threads and provide tensile strength for the cell-structure.
Functional proteins include enzymes and hormones that regulate the body's activities. Enzymes are the organic catalysts, without which most of the chemical reactions in the body would not proceed. Many enzymes catalyze only a single chemical reaction with a single set of reactants and do not act even on somewhat similar compounds, thus forming a lock and key relationship. Usually they exist in complex with co-factors such as vitamins and metal ions.
1. Even the most complex molecules of life, containing millions of atoms,
weigh only a small fracton of a gram. A gram molecular weight, called a mole, contains 6.20 x 102 molecules of the compound.
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