Ummm, I would eat it right now...
2005/05/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria
If essential amino acids are missing in the diet of rats, rats look for foods that contain them. Surprising, right? Some US researchers They considered it as such and have investigated it in depth. Now they have seen that the key is in a gene.
Proteins are produced by binding twenty amino acids. In both humans and rats, except eight, the cells are able to produce all the others. These eight are mandatory and must come from food. It seems that rats know what to eat so as not to lack these amino acids.
Researchers found traces of rat behavior in yeast. When some nutrients are missing, they showed that a yeast gene is activated. They then tested what happened if the rats were removed from the gene. And they realized that transgenic rats did not notice the lack of a mandatory amino acid if they were given food that did not contain amino acid. As a result, these rats were likely to suffer serious health problems. On the contrary, normal rats stopped eating the food that lacked the amino acid and went to look for another food that would provide them with that amino acid. Somehow they knew what they had to eat to be healthy.
The gene is called GCN2 and scientists believe that research will contribute to understanding human eating habits.
