Free radicals and antioxidants. I want to start with this image.
We have an arena, like a big football stadium it is big. It has a billion people
and it has a billion chairs. There is somebody sitting in every chair.
But, wait a minute there is a guy walking that doesn't have a chair
and he is grouchy, he is the only one that does not have a chair.
He walks around and finds someone that is smaller than him,
pulls that person out of their chair and sits in the empty chair
but there is still someone walking around without a chair.
This image works a little bit better the other way
a billion people and a billion chairs,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, but there is an extra chair.
The extra chair is in a section and these are nice people and they are embarrassed
because they have an empty chair in their section.
and they (like) hold hands over the empty chair
and maybe somebody gets out of their chair and sits in the empty chair
but that still leaves an empty chair.
a guy comes by on a bicycle... he feels bad about the situation,
but he cannot really abandon his bicycle. The people in the row behind the empty chair
start reaching forward and pretty soon the place is a mess
there is a broken down bicycle, the guy that was on the bicycle is nowhere to be seen
the rows are a mess and there is still an empty chair.
a couple of sections over a lady, seeing the mess, feeling compassionate
gets out of her chair and goes over to the now messed up section,
finds the empty chair and stabilizes the now messed up section.
But she leaves an empty chair behind her.
There is a truck driving around in this big stadium
The truck has a driver and a passenger.
The truck drives around looking for empty seats when it finds an empty seat
the passenger gets out of the truck, sits in the empty seat stabilizing that section
The instability that comes from the empty seat is now part of the truck.
this is a theme in antioxidants
the antioxidant picks up the instability of the free radical.
but the truck is designed for this so the truck drives around as a free radical
The truck drives around with the empty seat and it doesn't cause a problem
if the truck should come to a guy walking around, looking for a seat then that would be cool
the guy could get in the seat and everything would be well.
There is two messages that come out of this image
free radicals are all about the octet rule. I did not understand that when I started the project.
the match is perfect to the point of being one in a billion or maybe ten to the 18th
which would be one in a billion billion.
free radicals are very uncommon.
I want to take a look at this rock I think it is a cool rock.
It is either marble or quartz.
If it is marble it is calcium carbonate if it is quartz, it is silicate
any way you look at it, it has a lot of oxygen. it has maybe ten^23 atoms in it
big number......no free radicals. zero free radicals
this is a little block of wood it is a biological material
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen traces of just about anything you could imagine.
no free radicals
So free radicals are rare
where do they come from?
Free radicals are a product of the biosphere
aerobic respiration uses oxygen and produces free radicals
If you want a nice predictable reaction, you are not going to use oxygen
oxygen is nasty stuff on a chemical level.
on a quantum mechanical level it is not extremely predicable.
It does unexpected things aerobic respiration produces free radicals
there is some interesting research that shows that the antioxidant systems
built into the cell go back to the very beginning of life.
so that from the very beginning, aerobic respiration has produced free radicals
and from the very beginning, life has produced the antioxidant systems
to take care of the free radicals.
One last image
We have a manufacturing facility that makes let's say 'widgets' (or something like that)
you go to the manufacturing facility after everyone is done
and you look around and you see nuts and bolts and gaskets and maybe some wires
the floors are dirty and the trash cans are full
and they you look a little further and you realize that there is a crew
that is coming in to clean up the mess
life is like that the chemistry of the biosphere is like that
it is not perfect.
The chemistry of life produces stuff that really shouldn't be there
and there is systems that are built in to take care of the extra stuff
And this is not human beings, or vertebrates or invertebrates
this is all life
including, and even especially including.... plants
facinating