nutrition

—nutritional, nutritionary, adj. —nutritionally, adv.

/nooh trish"euhn, nyooh-/, n.

1. the act or process of nourishing or of being nourished.

2. the science or study of, or a course of study in, nutrition, esp. of humans.

3. the process by which organisms take in and utilize food material.

4. food; nutriment.

5. the pursuit of this science as an occupation or profession.

[1375-1425; late ME < LL nutrition- (s. of nutritio) a feeding, equiv. to L nutrit(us) (ptp. of nutrire to feed, NOURISH) + -ion- -ION]

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Processes of taking in and utilizing food substances.

Food generates energy and supplies materials used in body tissues and processes. Calories are supplied by carbohydrates (sugars and starches), fats, and proteins. Other nutrients include minerals, vitamins, and dietary fibre. Minerals are used in many ways

iron for hemoglobin; calcium for bones, teeth, and cellular processes; sodium and potassium to regulate homeostasis, iodine to produce thyroid hormones. Trace minerals have functions that are less well-understood. Fibre is not broken down chemically in the body but aids digestion, lowers blood cholesterol, and may help prevent some cancers and hypertension. Different amounts of these nutrients exist in different foods; a varied diet ensures an adequate supply. Nutritional supplements, required by some people, do not compensate for an unhealthy diet. Sufficient water is always essential. Inadequate nutrient intake or absorption leads to malnutrition and disease.

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Introduction

 the assimilation by living organisms of food materials that enable them to grow, maintain themselves, and reproduce.

 Food serves multiple functions in most living organisms. For example, it provides materials that are metabolized to supply the energy required for the absorption and translocation of nutrients (nutrient), for the synthesis of cell materials, for movement and locomotion, for excretion of waste products, and for all other activities of the organism. Food also provides materials from which all the structural and catalytic (catalysis) components of the living cell can be assembled. Living organisms differ in the particular substances that they require as food, in the manner in which they synthesize food substances or obtain them from the surrounding environment, and in the functions that these substances carry out in their cells. Nevertheless, general patterns can be discerned in the nutritional process throughout the living world and in the types of nutrients that are required to sustain life. These patterns are the subject of this article. For a full discussion of the nutritional requirements of human beings in particular, see the article nutrition, human.

Nutritional patterns in the living world

      Living organisms can be categorized by the way in which the functions of food are carried out in their bodies. Thus, organisms such as green plants and some bacteria that need only inorganic compounds for growth can be called autotrophic organisms; and organisms, including all animals, fungi, and most bacteria, that require both inorganic and organic compounds for growth are called heterotrophic. Other classifications have been used to include various other nutritional patterns. In one scheme, organisms are classified according to the energy source they utilize. Phototrophic, or photosynthetic (photosynthesis), organisms trap light energy and convert it to chemical energy, whereas chemoautotrophic, or chemosynthetic, organisms utilize inorganic or organic compounds to supply their energy requirements. If the electron-donor materials utilized to form reduced coenzymes consist of inorganic compounds, the organism is said to be lithotrophic; if organic, the organism is organotrophic.

      Combinations of these patterns may also be used to describe organisms. Higher plants, for example, are photolithotrophic; i.e., they utilize light energy, with the inorganic compound water serving as the ultimate electron donor. Certain photosynthetic bacteria that cannot utilize water as the electron donor and require organic compounds for this purpose are called photoorganotrophs. Animals, according to this classification, are chemoorganotrophs; i.e., they utilize chemical compounds to supply energy and organic compounds as electron donors.

      Despite wide variations in the nature of the external energy source utilized by various organisms, all organisms form from their external energy source an immediate source of energy, the chemical compound adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This energy-rich compound is common to all cells. Through the breaking of its high-energy phosphate bonds and thus by its conversion to a less energy-rich compound, adenosine diphosphate (ADP), ATP provides the energy for the chemical and mechanical work required by an organism. The energy requirements of organisms can be measured in either joules (joule) or calories (calorie).

Nutrition in plants

      Plants (plant), unlike animals, do not have to obtain organic materials for their nutrition, although these form the bulk of their tissues. By trapping solar energy in photosynthetic (photosynthesis) systems, they are able to synthesize nutrients from carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water. However, plants do require inorganic salts, which they absorb from the soil surrounding their roots; these include the elements phosphorus (in the form of phosphate), chlorine (as the chloride ion), potassium, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, iron, manganese, boron, copper, and zinc. Plants also require nitrogen, in the form of nitrate (NO₃⁻) or ammonium (NH₄⁺) ions. They will, in addition, take up inorganic compounds that they themselves do not need, such as iodides and cobalt and selenium salts.

      The nutrients found in soil result in part from the gradual breakdown of the rocky material on the Earth's surface as a result of rain and, in some areas, freezing. Primarily composed of alumina and silica, rocks (rock) also contain smaller amounts of all the mineral elements needed by plants. Another source of soil nutrients is the decomposition of dead plants and animals and their waste products. Although a spadeful of soil may seem inert to the eye—apart from an occasional earthworm—it contains millions of microorganisms, the net effect of which is to break down organic materials, releasing simpler mineral salts. Furthermore, two groups of bacteria fix atmospheric nitrogen—that is, they are able to incorporate this relatively inert element into nitrate ions. Bacteria of the genus Azobacter live freely in soil, while those of the genus Rhizobium live sheltered in the roots of leguminous plants such as peas and beans. Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) also can fix nitrogen and are important for growing rice in the flooded paddy fields of Southeast Asia.

      In areas of intensive farming, where crops are harvested at least once a year and no animals browse the fields, human intervention in the form of fertilizers (fertilizer) is important. A traditional form of fertilizer has been animal manure, or muck, made from the straw bedding of cattle that has been soaked in excreta and allowed to ferment for a period. Since the 1800s farmers also have used artificial fertilizers, at first using naturally occurring mixtures of chemicals such as chalk (supplying calcium), rock phosphates, and the natural manure known as guano. Commercial guano consists of the accumulated deposits of bird droppings and is valued for its high concentration of nitrates. Modern chemical fertilizers include one or more of three important elements: nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. Most nitrogenous fertilizers are produced by a technique in which nitrogen and hydrogen are combined at very high pressures in the presence of catalysts to form ammonia (NH₃). This can then be injected into the soil as a gas that is quickly absorbed or, more commonly, converted into solid products such as ammonium salts, urea, and nitrates, which can be used as ingredients in mixed fertilizers.

Nutrition in bacteria

      These small organisms, popularly thought of only as sources of infection, are of vital importance in the overall life cycles of plants and animals. They commonly have to digest (digestion) their food, as do larger organisms, and their cell walls do not allow the passage of large compounds. If the bacteria are in a liquid containing sugars, the sugars will diffuse through the bacterial wall and then typically be consolidated into larger molecules so that the concentration gradient will continue to promote inward diffusion. However, in order to utilize larger molecules such as starches and protein, bacteria have to excrete digestive enzymes (i.e., catalysts) into the surrounding fluid. This is obviously an expensive function for an individual organism, because much of the secreted enzymes and also the digested products may drift away from, rather than toward, the bacterial cell. However, for a cluster of thousands or millions of bacteria acting in the same way, the process is less expensive.

      Bacteria vary greatly in their nutritional requirements. Some, like plants, require a source of energy such as sugars and only inorganic nutrients. Some are aerobic, meaning that they require oxygen in order to capture energy—for example, by oxidation of sugars to carbon dioxide and water. Others are anaerobic (in some cases, actually poisoned by oxygen) and require an energy source such as a sugar that they can ferment either to lactic acid or to ethanol and carbon dioxide—obtaining less energy in the process, but enough to meet their needs.

      Apparently as an adaptation to many generations of living in a nutrient-rich medium, some bacteria have lost the ability to synthesize many essential compounds. For example, many of the Lactobacilli, commonly found in unsterilized milk, require essentially all the water-soluble vitamins and amino acids needed by animals. Because of this, they have been used as convenient models for assaying the value of foods as sources of particular nutrients.

Nutrition in animals (animal)

      Simple observation reveals that the animal kingdom is dependent on plants for food. Even meat-eating, or carnivorous, animals such as the lion feed on grazing animals and thus are indirectly dependent on the plant kingdom for their survival.

Herbivores (herbivore)

      Plant cell walls are constructed mainly of cellulose, a material that the digestive enzymes of higher animals are unable to digest or disrupt. Because of this, even the nutritious contents of plant cells are not fully available for digestion. As an evolutionary response to this problem, many leaf eaters, or herbivores (herbivore), have developed a pouch at the anterior end of the stomach, called the rumen, that provides a space for the bacterial fermentation of ingested leaves. In ruminant species such as cattle and sheep, fermented material, called cud, is regurgitated from the rumen so that the animal can chew it into even smaller pieces and spread the ruminal fluid throughout the mass of ingesta. Microorganisms found in the ruminal fluid ferment cellulose to acetic acid and other short-chain fatty acids (fatty acid), which can then be absorbed and utilized as energy sources. Protein within the cells of the leaves is also released and degraded; some is resynthesized for digestion as microbial protein in the true stomach and small intestine. Another action of ruminal bacteria is the synthesis of some water-soluble vitamins so that, under most conditions, the host animal no longer requires them to be supplied in its food.

      Because conditions in the rumen are anaerobic, another effect of ruminal fermentation is that the fatty material in the food becomes hydrogenated (hydrogenation). Many metabolic reactions in organisms involve the removal of hydrogen atoms, and if the surplus hydrogen cannot be combined with oxygen to form water, an alternative pathway is for it to be added to unsaturated fatty acids. The result is more saturated fatty acids, which, after absorption, form deposits of harder fat. Thus, beef fat (suet) is characteristically harder at room temperature than is pork or chicken fat. Butterfat, too, is relatively saturated, being kept somewhat soft at room temperature only by the inclusion of short-chain fatty acids in the glycerol esters. This lack of the essential polyunsaturated fatty acids in ruminant fats can make them less desirable as human food.

      Other herbivores make efficient use of leafy foods through hindgut fermentation. In animal species generally, the main breakdown of foods by enzymes and absorption into the bloodstream occurs in the small intestine. The main function of the large intestine is then to absorb most of the water remaining so as to conserve losses when the water supply is limited. In the “hindgut fermenters,” undigested food residues undergo bacterial fermentation in the cecum, a side pocket at the distal end of the small intestine, before moving into the large intestine. In the large intestine the short-chain fatty acids produced in the cecum are absorbed and utilized. Animals in this class include horses, zebras, elephants, rhinoceroses, koalas, and rabbits.

      Hindgut fermenters are somewhat less efficient than are ruminants at digesting very high-fibre foods. However, only indigestible residues are fermented in the cecum, so that hindgut fermenters do not experience the inevitable energy loss that occurs when dietary carbohydrates are fermented in the rumen. Also, the smaller bulk of the cecum allows these animals to be more athletic and better able to escape their carnivore predators.

Carnivores

      Carnivores (carnivore) necessarily form only a small portion of the animal kingdom, because each animal must eat a great many other animals of equivalent size in order to maintain itself over a lifetime. In addition to possessing the teeth and claws needed to kill their prey and then tear the flesh apart, carnivores have digestive enzymes that are able to break down muscle protein into amino acids, which can then diffuse through the walls of the small intestine. Therefore, carnivores have no need for any special development of the gut that allows for fermentation. Carnivores are also able to utilize animal fat. If their prey is small, they can chew and swallow bones, which serve as a source of calcium. Some carnivores, particularly cats (feline) (family Felidae), are obligate carnivores, meaning they cannot obtain all the nutrients that they need from the plant kingdom and bacteria. In particular, obligate carnivores lack the enzyme needed to split carotene, obtained from plants, into vitamin A. Instead, these animals obtain vitamin A from the liver of their prey. Obligate carnivores are similarly unable to synthesize some essential very-long-chain, highly unsaturated fatty acids that other animals can make from shorter fatty acids found in plants.

Omnivores (omnivore)

      Omnivores are miscellaneous species whose teeth and digestive systems seem designed to eat a relatively concentrated diet, since they have no large sac or chamber for the fermentation of fibrous material. They are able to chew and digest meat, though they do not have an absolute requirement for it unless there is no other practical source of 12 (vitamin B12) (cobalamin). Humans are in this category, as are dogs, rodents, and most monkeys. All omnivores have active bacterial flora in their small cecum and large intestine and can absorb short-chain fatty acids at this point but not vitamins. Some species obtain essential vitamins by coprophagy, the eating of a proportion of their fecal pellets that contain vitamins synthesized by bacteria. Chickens (chicken), too, are omnivores. They have to swallow food without chewing it, but the food passes to an organ called the gizzard, where seeds and other foods are ground to a slurry, often with the aid of swallowed stones.

Nutrients

      Some precursors (i.e., the substances from which other substances are formed) of cell materials can be synthesized by the cell from other materials, while others must be supplied in foods. All the inorganic (inorganic compound) materials required for growth, together with an assortment of organic compounds (organic compound) whose number may vary from 1 to 30 or more, depending on the organism, fall into the latter category. Although organisms are able to synthesize nonessential nutrients, such nutrients are frequently utilized directly if present in food, thereby saving the organism the need to expend the energy required to synthesize them.

Inorganic nutrients

      A number of inorganic elements (minerals (mineral)) are essential for the growth of living things. boron, for example, has been demonstrated to be required for the growth of many—perhaps all—higher plants but has not been implicated as an essential element in the nutrition of either microorganisms or animals. Trace amounts of fluorine (as fluoride) are certainly beneficial, and perhaps essential, for proper tooth formation in higher animals. Similarly, iodine (as iodide) is required in animals for formation of thyroxine, the active component of an important regulatory hormone. silicon (as silicate) is a prominent component of the outer skeletons of diatomaceous protozoans and similar organisms and is required in them for normal growth. In higher animals the requirement for silicon is much smaller. A less obvious example of a specialized mineral requirement is provided by calcium, which is required by higher animals in comparatively large amounts because it is a major component of bone and eggshells (in birds); for other organisms, calcium is an essential nutrient but only as a trace element. Mineral elements in wide variety are present in trace amounts in almost all foodstuffs. It cannot be assumed that the nonessential mineral elements play no useful role in metabolism.

      Important antagonistic relationships between certain mineral nutrients also are known. A large excess of rubidium, for example, interferes with the utilization of potassium in some lactic-acid bacteria; zinc can interfere with manganese utilization in the same organism. In animal nutrition, excessive molybdenum or zinc (both of which are essential minerals) interferes with the utilization of copper, another essential mineral, and, in higher plants, excessive zinc can lead to a disorder that is known as iron chlorosis. Proper nutrient growth media for microorganisms and plants or diets for animals, therefore, require not only that the essential mineral elements be provided in sufficient amounts but also that they be used in the proper ratios to each other.

Organic nutrients

      The organic nutrients are the necessary building blocks of various cell components that certain organisms cannot synthesize and therefore must obtain preformed. These compounds include carbohydrates, protein, and lipids. Other organic nutrients include the vitamins, which are required in small amounts, because of either the catalytic role or the regulatory role they play in metabolism.

Carbohydrates (carbohydrate)

      Quantitatively, the most important of nutrients are the carbohydrates (carbohydrate) synthesized by plants, since they provide most of the energy utilized by the animal kingdom. Mature fruit is rich in sugars (sugar) that attract birds and other small animals. The seed coats in the fruit survive their rapid passage through the gut of these animals, who thus scatter widely the still viable seeds of the plant. Sucrose, in particular, also accumulates in the stems of sugarcane and in the roots of sugar beet, serving as an energy reserve for each plant; both are used for the industrial production of table sugar.

      Dietary sugars include monosaccharides (monosaccharide), which contain one sugar (glucose) unit, and disaccharides (disaccharide), which are made up of two sugar units linked together. In order to be utilized by an organism, all complex carbohydrates must be broken down into simple sugars, which, in most cases, are rapidly digested and absorbed. For example, even the freely soluble disaccharide sucrose must first be hydrolyzed to glucose and fructose by a specific enzyme, sucrase. Newborn piglets do not secrete this enzyme and therefore cannot make use of sucrose. Conversely, the disaccharide lactose is rapidly hydrolyzed by newborn animals, but most species—even some humans—stop secreting the enzyme lactase after weaning. This is understandable since lactose occurs naturally only in milk, which an animal usually will not encounter again after its suckling period.

      The major storage carbohydrate in plant seeds, starch is a polysaccharide, formed from the condensation of several glucose units, primarily through linkages that are rapidly broken down by digestive enzymes in microorganisms as well as in higher animals. However, different plant starches vary in the cross-linkages between these basic chains, and this variation can result in more compact molecules that are resistant to digestion. One of the major effects of cooking is that starch granules swell with absorbed water and become more easily digestible. Surprisingly, even members of the cat (feline) family, which would not encounter starch in their natural carnivorous diet, can utilize it quite efficiently when it is finely ground. Commercial dry cat foods may contain 20 percent or more starch.

      Plant cell walls are constructed principally from cellulose. Cellulose is like starch in that it is made from condensed glucose units, but a different type of linkage between these units allows the chains to lie in flat planes, and vertebrates have no enzymes to digest these linkages. However, herbivorous (herbivore) species have gastrointestinal systems that allow for the bacterial fermentation of cellulose either in a fore-stomach (rumen) or hindgut, which enables the animals to benefit from the metabolites of cellulose, principally short-chain fatty acids. Other polysaccharides in plant cell walls include pectins (pectin) and hemicelluloses (hemicellulose), which give a mixture of sugars, such as xylose and arabinose, upon hydrolysis. These sugars also are fermented by bacteria but are not broken down and digested by animal enzymes. Rigid plant structures contain lignin, a phenolic polymer that is impervious to digestion by both animals and bacteria. Considered together, these materials make up what is called dietary fibre.

Lipids (lipid) (fats and oils)

      Another form in which some plants store energy in their seeds is fat, commonly called oil in its liquid form. In animals, fats form the only large-scale energy store. Fats are a more concentrated energy source than carbohydrates; oxidation yields roughly nine and four kilocalories of energy per gram, respectively.

      A fat consists of three fatty acids (fatty acid) (i.e., a hydrocarbon chain with a carboxylic acid group at one end) attached to a glycerol backbone. The physical properties of fats depend on the fatty acids that they contain. All fats are liquid when present in living tissues. The fats of warm-blooded animals can, of course, have a higher freezing point than that of cold-blooded animals such as fish. Plants that survive frosts must have a particularly low freezing point. In general, organisms lay down fat that has little or no excess of liquidity; that is, it has a freezing point near the maximum consistent with the organism's viability.

      Fatty acids differ from one another in two ways: chain length and saturation. Chain length varies from 4 to 22 carbons, with most fatty acids having 16 or 18 carbons. The relatively low freezing point of a cow's butterfat results from its content of the 4-carbon short-chain fatty acid butyric acid; the longer the saturated chains, the higher the freezing point of the acids themselves and of the fat containing them. However, a greater effect of liquidity comes from the introduction of unsaturated (double) bonds in the chains. More than one double bond (polyunsaturation) makes it more difficult for fats to remain solid at room temperature.

      Animals generally either store absorbed fatty acids or oxidize them immediately as a source of energy. Particular fatty acids are needed for the production of phospholipids (phospholipid), which form an essential portion of cell membranes and nerve fibres, and for the synthesis of certain hormones (hormone). Animals can synthesize their own fat from an excess of absorbed sugars, but they are limited in their ability to synthesize essential polyunsaturated fatty acids such as linoleic acid and linolenic acid. Thus, fatty acids are not just an alternative energy source—they are a vital dietary ingredient. The main vegetable oils are good sources of linoleic acid, and most of these also contain a smaller proportion of linolenic acid. Cats (feline) have lost one of the principal enzymes used by other animals to convert linoleic acid to arachidonic acid, which is needed for the synthesis of prostaglandins (prostaglandin) and other hormones. Since arachidonic acid is not found in plants, cats are obligate carnivores (carnivore), meaning that under natural conditions they must eat animal tissue in order to survive and reproduce.

Proteins (protein)

      The main organic material in the working tissue of both plants and animals is protein, large molecules containing chains of condensed units of some 20 different amino acids (amino acid). In animals, protein food is digested to free amino acids before entering the bloodstream. Plants can synthesize their own amino acids, which are required for protein production, provided they have a source of nitrate or other simple nitrogenous compounds and sulfur, needed for the synthesis of cysteine and methionine. Animals can also synthesize some amino acids from ammonium ions and carbohydrate metabolites; however, others cannot be synthesized and are therefore dietary essentials. Two amino acids, cysteine and tyrosine, can be synthesized only by metabolism of the essential amino acids methionine and phenylalanine, respectively. Bacteria living in the rumen of ruminant animals can synthesize all the amino acids commonly present in protein, and the true stomach of the ruminant will continue to receive microbial protein of reasonably good quality for digestion.

      Animals need protein to grow. This requirement is roughly proportional to the growth rate and is reflected in the protein content of the milk secreted during the suckling period. For example, a piglet doubles its birth weight in 18 days, and sow's milk has protein at a level supplying 25 percent of the total energy. In contrast, humans take approximately 180 days to double their birth weight, and breast milk contains protein at a level equivalent to only about 8 percent of the total energy. Young animals fed experimental diets completely lacking one essential amino acid all exhibit an immediate cessation of growth.

      Adults, too, require protein in fairly large amounts, more than would be needed to replace the small amount of protein lost by the body through urine, feces, and shed hair and skin. It is true that animal tissues are continually “turning over” their proteins—i.e., hydrolyzing and re-synthesizing them—but this does not explain the additional protein requirement, since the amino acids released are available for reuse. It appears, however, that the enzymes available to metabolize excess amino acids do not inactivate completely when the body is short of protein but instead remain at an “idling” rate. Normally, this is not a disadvantage, since the diets of adult animals, including humans, contain more protein than is required to balance the idling losses. It also appears that, in the course of evolution, the idling rates have become roughly adjusted to the normal protein intake. Thus, adult rodents living on a range of foods—some quite low in protein—need no more than 5 percent of their energy in the form of protein. In contrast, cats, whose ancestral carnivorous diet was much higher in protein, need some 20 percent in their diet to balance minimal losses.

Vitamins (vitamin)

      Vitamins (vitamin) may be defined as organic substances that play a required catalytic role within the cell (usually as components of coenzymes or other groups associated with enzymes) and must be obtained in small amounts through the diet. Vitamin requirements are specific for each organism, and their deficiency may cause disease. Vitamin deficiencies in young animals usually result in growth failure, various symptoms whose nature depends on the vitamin, and eventual death.

      Although a vitamin is usually defined as an organic chemical which an animal or human must obtain from the diet in very small amounts, this is not entirely true. vitamin A does not occur in the plant kingdom, but the pigment carotene is universally present in green plants, and most animals can split a molecule of carotene into two molecules of vitamin A. The exceptions are cats and probably other carnivores, which under natural conditions have to obtain the preformed vitamin by consuming the tissues of other animals. niacin, too, is not an absolute requirement, since most animals (cats again being an exception) can synthesize it from the amino acid tryptophan if the latter is present in excess of its use for protein synthesis.

       vitamin D is not a true vitamin: most species do not need it in their diet, because they obtain an adequate supply through the exposure of skin to sunlight, which converts a sterol present in dermal tissue to vitamin D. The vitamin is subsequently metabolized to form a hormone that acts to control the absorption and utilization of calcium and phosphate. Animals such as rodents (rodent), which normally have little exposure to sunlight and search for food mostly at night, appear to have evolved so as to be independent of vitamin D so long as their intakes of calcium and phosphate are well-balanced.

       vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is an essential chemical in the tissues of all species, but most can make it for themselves, so that for them it is not a vitamin. Presumably, species that cannot synthesize vitamin C—they include humans, guinea pigs, and fruit-eating bats—had ancestors that lost the ability at a time when their diet was rich in ascorbic acid.

       bacteria vary greatly in their need for vitamins. Many are entirely independent of outside sources, but at the other extreme some of the strains of bacteria found in milk (i.e., Lactobacillus) have lost the ability to synthesize the B vitamins (vitamin B complex) that they need. This property has made them useful for assaying extracts of foods for their vitamin B content. Indeed, many vitamins of this group were first discovered as growth factors for bacteria before being tested with animals and humans. The mixed bacterial flora in the guts of animals are, on balance, synthesizers of the B vitamins. Consequently, ruminant animals do not have to obtain them from an external source. On the other hand, the ability of hindgut fermenters to absorb vitamins from their large intestine is uncertain. Rats and rabbits, whose nutritional needs have been studied intensively, have both been found to engage in coprophagy, the eating of fecal pellets that are vitamin-rich as a result of bacterial fermentation in the hindgut.

      For one B vitamin—cobalamin, or 12 (vitamin B12)—bacterial fermentation is the only source, though it can be obtained indirectly from the tissues or milk of animals that have obtained it themselves from bacteria. The generalization that “the animal kingdom lives on the plant kingdom” is therefore not the whole truth, because animals rely partly on bacteria for this one micronutrient.

Interdependency of nutritional requirements

      The effects of one mineral nutrient in reducing or increasing the requirement for another have been mentioned previously (see above Inorganic nutrients (nutrition)). Similar relationships occur among organic nutrients and originate for several reasons, the most common of which are discussed briefly below.

Competition for sites of absorption by the cell

      Since absorption of nutrients frequently occurs by way of active transport within cell membranes (membrane), an excess of one nutrient (A) may inhibit absorption of a second nutrient (B), if they share the same absorption pathway. In such cases, the apparent requirement for nutrient B increases; B, however, can sometimes be supplied in an alternate form that is able to enter the cell by a different route. Many examples of amino acid antagonism, in which inhibition of growth by one amino acid is counteracted by another amino acid, are best explained by this mechanism. For example, under some conditions Lactobacillus casei requires both D- and L- alanine, which differ from each other only in the position of the amino, or NH₂, group in the molecule, and the two forms of this amino acid share the same absorption pathway. Excess D- alanine inhibits growth of this species, but the inhibition can be alleviated either by supplying additional L-alanine or, more effectively, by supplying peptides (peptide) of L-alanine. The peptides enter the cell by a pathway different from that of the two forms of alanine and, after they are in the cell, can be broken down to form L-alanine. Relationships of this type provide one explanation for the fact that peptides are frequently more effective than amino acids in promoting growth of bacteria.

Competition for sites of utilization within the cell

      This phenomenon is similar to that regarding competition for absorption sites, but it occurs inside the cell and only between structurally similar nutrients (e.g., leucine and valine; serine and threonine).

Precursor-product relationships

      The requirement of rats and humans for the essential amino acids phenylalanine and methionine is substantially reduced if tyrosine, which is formed from phenylalanine, or cysteine, which is formed from methionine, is added to the diet. These relationships are explained by the fact that tyrosine and cysteine are synthesized in animals from phenylalanine and methionine, respectively. When the former (product) amino acids are supplied preformed, the latter (precursor) amino acids are required in smaller amounts. Several instances of the sparing of one nutrient by another because they have similar precursor-product relationships have been identified in other organisms.

Changes in metabolic pathways within the cell

      Rats (rat) fed diets containing large amounts of fat require substantially less thiamin (vitamin B₁) than do those fed diets high in carbohydrate. The utilization of carbohydrate as an energy source (i.e., for ATP formation) is known to involve an important thiamin-dependent step, which is bypassed when fat is used as an energy source, and it is assumed that the lessened requirement for thiamin results from the change in metabolic pathways.

syntrophism

      Since the nutritional requirements and metabolic activities of organisms differ, it is clear that two or more different organisms growing relatedly may produce different overall changes in the environment (ecosystem). A rough example is provided by a balanced aquarium, in which aquatic plants utilize light and the waste products of animals—e.g., carbon dioxide, water, ammonia—to synthesize cell materials and generate oxygen, which in turn provide the materials necessary for animal growth. Such relationships are common among microorganisms; i.e., intermediate or end products of metabolism of one organism may provide essential nutrients for another. The mixed populations that result in nature provide examples of this phenomenon, which is called syntrophism; in some instances, the relationship may be so close as to constitute nutritional symbiosis, or mutualism. Several examples of this phenomenon have been found among thiamin-requiring yeasts and fungi, certain of which (group A) synthesized the thiazole component of thiamin molecule but require the pyrimidine portion preformed; for a second group (group B), the relationship is reversed. When group A and group B are grown together in a thiamin-free medium, both types of organisms survive, since each organism synthesizes the growth factor required by its partner; neither organism grows alone under these same conditions. Thus, two or more types of microorganisms frequently grow in situations in which only one species would not.

      Such nutritional interrelationships may explain the fact that the nutritionally demanding lactic-acid bacteria (lactic-acid bacterium) are able to coexist with the nutritionally nondemanding coliform bacteria in the intestinal tracts of animals. It is known that the bacterial flora of the intestinal tract synthesize sufficient amounts of certain vitamins (e.g., vitamin K, folic acid) so that detection of deficiency symptoms in rats requires special measures, and the role of rumen bacteria in ruminant animals (e.g., cows, sheep) in rendering otherwise indigestible cellulose and other materials available to the host animal is well-known. These few examples indicate that syntrophic interrelationships are widespread in nature and may contribute substantially to the nutrition of a wide variety of species.

Nutritional evolution of organisms

      Little is known about the nutritional evolution of living organisms. Nucleic acids, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, which are present in all living cells, are formed by specific reaction sequences from a limited number of smaller compounds, most of which are common to all living organisms and, according to current theories, were available on Earth before life arose. Since less complex metabolic organization and less energy are required to synthesize cellular proteins from preformed amino acids than from carbon dioxide and other precursors, it is assumed that the simplest early forms of life were heterotrophic organisms requiring many organic nutrients for growth and that they selected such nutrients from their surroundings. As the supply of these preformed substances was exhausted, the organisms presumably developed the capacity to synthesize these preformed substances from simpler (precursor) materials present in the environment; in some organisms, this synthesizing capacity eventually evolved to the extent that carbon from carbon dioxide could be utilized to synthesize organic compounds.

      At this point, autotrophy, as it now is known, became possible; autotrophy, in fact, may have evolved as a result of the exhaustion of the supply of preformed organic materials in the environment and the consequent necessity of organisms to synthesize the requirements themselves in order to survive. Implicit in this theory is the demonstrable assumption that autotrophic cells contain the most complex biosynthetic organization found in living things and that heterotrophic cells are simpler in that certain biosynthetic pathways do not occur. After the evolution of photosynthesis, a constantly renewable source of the organic compounds necessary for heterotrophic cell growth became available. It became feasible that those organisms whose environments provided a constantly available supply of a given compound could lose, through changes in their genetic material (mutations (mutation)), the ability to synthesize that compound and still survive. Entire biosynthetic pathways may have been lost in this way; as long as such mutant organisms remained in an environment that supplied the necessary compound, the simplification in cellular organization and the energy saved by using preformed cell components would have given them a competitive advantage over the more complex parents from which they were derived and permitted stabilization of the mutation within the cell type. A theory that the requirements of modern organisms for essential organic nutrients arose through the loss of synthetic abilities present in more complex parent organisms was confirmed by the discovery that artificially produced mutant offspring of microorganisms can be readily obtained and may require the presence of one or more preformed organic compounds that the parent microorganisms could synthesize.

Esmond E. Snell A. Stewart Truswell Kenneth Carpenter

Additional Reading

Good sources on animal and plant nutrition in general include P. McDonald et al., Animal Nutrition, 5th ed. (1995); Lee Russell McDowell, Vitamins in Animal and Human Nutrition, 2nd ed. (2000); I.H. Burger and J.P.W. Rivers (eds.), Nutrition of the Dog and Cat (1989); Horst Marschner, Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants, 2nd ed. (1995); and Walter Mertz (ed.), Trace Elements in Human and Animal Nutrition, 5th ed., 2 vol. (1986–87), a classic text on inorganic micronutrients.A. Stewart Truswell Kenneth Carpenter

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