====== Vitamin C deficits ======

Humans, some non-human primates, guinea pigs, bats, capybara and some birds and fish have lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C - apparently due to an as-yet-unexplained gene mutation defect. Because vitamin C is required for a range of essential metabolic reactions, these animals can't maintain health over sustained periods without obtaining the vitamin by eating other organisms (or derived products) which //can// synthesize it.

>Most animals synthesize vitamin C but some have lost the ability to do so. Those animals that lack vitamin C synthetic ability do not bear any phylogenetic relationship to each other, implying many independent mutations all resulting in the same phenotype. No common environmental influence is apparent. __To date, there is no satisfactory evolutionary explanation for the apparent random loss of vitamin C synthetic ability.__ It remains possible that other animals have not been recognized to have lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C. Identification of all non-synthesizers possibly could enhance recognition of a pattern, but so far none is evident."    [source below]

Further:

>Vitamin C is by its chemical nature an electron donor, commonly called an antioxidant. However, the widely held assumption that vitamin C has an important role as an antioxidant in humans is unproven."\\ \\ Source : [[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/odi.12446/full|Vitamin C: the known and the unknown and Goldilocks]] {{:oa_padlock_grn.png?16&nolink|}} //Oral Diseases// journal.

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