Uric acid is a waste product of purine metabolism. We eat purines with food and make ourselves inside our body. Based on purine, Nature designed the nitrogenous bases that make up our DNA and RNA. So purines literally sit in our chromosomes. Well, they fall out from there when the cells are destroyed.
Purines are also involved in the work of a bunch of different enzymes, and even the same caffeine that everyone loves is also a close relative of purines.
Mind
A chemist from a medical university told the story that people with gout are, on average, a little smarter than everyone else. Because, probably, they have an excess of uric acid, which is close to caffeine in its structure.
Caffeine, by the way, is chemically made from uric acid. Can you imagine?
Urea
It comes from the breakdown of proteins in our body. Rather, first in our body, toxic ammonia is obtained from protein, and only then it turns into harmless urea.
Ammonia in the refrigerator
Have you heard about ammonia? It is a refrigerant. It is used in space station cooling systems. And in general, it is very good for refrigerators.
Ammonia is used in the so-called "coarse cold". That is, in giant industrial refrigerators. Well, it's like a house where ammonia flows along the walls in pipes. So the house turns into a freezer.
An acquaintance of mine in the dashing nineties worked as a refrigeration equipment maintenance mechanic. And once, with a drink, this man arranged an emergency release of ammonia from such a house. A toxic cloud crept across the area. As in films based on the works of Remarque. It seems to have worked.
Ammonia
Ammonia is very corrosive. Remember ammonia? There is an aqueous solution of ammonia. If you smell it, he will raise the dead.
One of my patients was once tried by nurses return from a swoon, slipping a cotton swab with ammonia under his nose. And dropped it in her eye. A friend quickly woke up, but then spent another two weeks in ophthalmology with a corneal burn. This is me again to the question of the toxicity of ammonia.
Cirrhosis of the liver
Another patient of mine died of ammonia. He had cirrhosis, and the liver was almost unable to cope with its work.
At that moment, his liver needed neutralize ammonia, which was formed in the intestines due to the breakdown of protein. And now the liver could no longer cope with toxins, and the patient was slowly loading up. That is, he plunged into a hepatic coma.
Against this background, his varicose vein burst in the esophagus, which just crawl out with cirrhosis of the liver. Well, a lot of blood poured out of this vein. The blood in the intestines instantly decomposes with the formation of large amounts of ammonia. This ammonia finished off the patient.
And you say: "Fu, urea!"... Urea saves us.
All the other way around
Sometimes ammonia is obtained back from urea. This is done by the microbes that live in the stomach. The ammonia solution is alkaline, and microbes with this solution extinguish stomach acid around them. Well settled down.
We use the same mechanism to our advantage when we chew gum with urea. Urea is urea. The microbes in our mouth ferment this urea to form ammonia and alkalize the environment around our teeth. This way the acid destroys the teeth less.
Birds
If in humans ammonia is converted into urea, then in birds this process follows the path of uric acid synthesis. That is, where we make urea, birds make uric acid.
Remember how we discussed kidney stones from uric acid? She quickly crystallizes there. Here and in birds, sometimes almost sand falls out, consisting of uric acid. Nature miracle.
It turns out that urea and uric acid are different, but they contain nitrogen and are excreted in the urine. So nitrogen and urine combine them.
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