Cytochrome P450

Living organisms during the course of evolution, and during their lives, are subject to different environmental pressures, these factors can be environmental, biological or chemical. Under these pressures organisms must react, adapt or perish, cytochrome P450 comes into action when this is necessary, more on this later.

One of the constant and strongest pressures is the chemical onslaught of the most varied sources, that enter the body through food or air. Nutrients entering orally with others thato are not. Among them there are those that are not absorbed and excreted easily. But there are others of more recent origin, artificial synthesis, toxic natural synthesis or in the case of humans, drugs, called xenobiotics.

cytochrome Cytochrome P450What does an organism do when exposed to chemicals that it may only find once in its life? It would be unreasonable and impractical for the body to generate biochemical mechanisms, enzymes, degradation and excretion pathways for each molecule. The more efficient system would involve a general mechanism which is responsible for ridding the body of the highest numbers of molecules simultaneously. The immune system has an action on a large number of cases, but there is another set of rich functionality and wide action, Cytochrome P450 Enzymes.

Most xenobiotics are fat soluble, lipid soluble compounds, so that these cross biological membranes easily and accumulate in fatty tissues and cells in other tissues and are in sufficient quantity (which depends on the type of chemical) interference with normal metabolic processes in the form of toxicological and pharmacological responses.

The method of action of Cytochrome p-450 enzymes is to introduce a functional group to the lipophilic compound, or make it more soluble, and therefore more easily excreted.

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