Transcript Diet and purines Prof David Perrett William Harvey Research Institute Barts & the London School of Medicine.

Diet and purines
Prof David Perrett
William Harvey Research Institute
Barts & the London School of Medicine
or
You are what you eat!
Gout
A disease of good living ?
A disease of lifestyle?
What are you made of
Protein
Fats
Carbohydrates
Oligonucleotides
Inorganic materials
and of course Water
70% of your body is water
Reference Man
Reference Woman
Body Composition Methods
• Direct Assessment - Cadaver (Dissection v chemical analyses)
Body Composition of 5 Cadavers
Remainder
10
ASH
5
Fat
18
Protein
17
Water
60
0
10
20
30
Percent Body Weight
40
50
60
Gross Composition of Human Body
Body composition analysis often focuses on the tissue
and whole body levels of multi-component model.
Protein
Fats - Lipids
Sugars
Bread also contains yeast
Water
Nucleic acids and purines
We eats these as
DNA and RNA
Purine bases
IMP and possibly ATP
Ischemic catabolites
e.g. Hypoxanthine, urate
Minor Nutrients
Vitamins
Metals
Co-enzymes
Digestion
Large molecules must be broken down to smaller molecules
Then they can pass through the gut and enter the blood stream
Then they can enter cells where some molecules can be directly
used for macromolecule synthesis others will enter metabolic
processes.
Some of the individual protein units (amino acids) cannot be
made by the body and are said to be essential.
Not the case with purines and pyrimidines
Nucleic acids and purines
Purines and pyrimidines can be made by our bodies.
This de novo synthesis takes a lot of energy so nature
tries to re-use the purine and pyrimidine ring
structures for ATP, etc and DNA & RNA synthesis.
Nucleic acids and purines
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP)
– our energy metabolite
ATP is essential for every breath we take
Partial Metabolic Pathway for ATP degradation
DNA
ATP
AMP
IMP
Adenosine
HPRTase
Inosine
5’NT
Hypoxanthine
Xanthine Oxidase
Xanthine
Xanthine Oxidase
Urate
Hypoxanthine
Increases in food on storage
Related to the taste of meat and meat
Plant Purines
Caffeine
Tea, coffee,
Also soft drinks
Theobromine
Chocolate
Gut Bacteria
The average human consists of
ca. 1013 (ten trillion) cells.
We have about ten times that
number of microorganisms in our
gut.
There's an estimated 500
different bacterial species in the
intestine.
The metabolic activity performed
by these bacteria equal to that of
a virtual organ making the gut
bacteria a "forgotten" organ.
E. Coli
Seoul – South Korea 2007