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Essential Minerals for Bone Health01:31

Essential Minerals for Bone Health

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The minerals contained in all of the food we consume are essential for our organ systems. However, certain essential minerals, such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, manganese, and fluoride, largely affect bone health.
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Calcium and phosphate are essential electrolytes in the human body, with calcium being the most abundant mineral. Around 99% of the body's calcium is stored in the skeleton and teeth, forming a crystal lattice of mineral salts in combination with phosphates. Calcium plays crucial roles in various bodily functions such as blood clotting, neurotransmitter release, muscle tone maintenance, and nervous and muscle tissue excitability.
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For solutions containing mixtures of different cations, the identity of each cation can be determined by qualitative analysis. This technique involves a series of selective precipitations with different chemical reagents, each reaction producing a characteristic precipitate for a specific group of cations. Metal ions within a group are further separated by varying the pH, heating the mixture to redissolve a precipitate, or adding other reagents to form complex ions.
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Calcium Carbonate Formation in the Presence of Biopolymeric Additives
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Controlling biomineralisation with cations.

K K Sand1, C S Pedersen, J Matthiesen

  • 1Nano-Science Center, Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. kks@nano.ku.dk.

Nanoscale
|July 14, 2017
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Cations like potassium and calcium control how polysaccharides affect calcite growth. This ancient biomineralization mechanism, observed in Cretaceous chalk, offers insights into regulating mineral formation.

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Area of Science:

  • Biomineralization
  • Geochemistry
  • Polymer Science

Background:

  • Biomineralizing organisms utilize polymers to control calcite (CaCO3) growth, influencing its rate and morphology.
  • The precise mechanisms by which organisms regulate these polymer interactions remain largely unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how cations influence the interaction between polysaccharides and calcite.
  • To explore the ancient role of these cation-polysaccharide interactions in biomineralization, dating back at least 60 million years.

Main Methods:

  • Extraction of ancient coccolith-associated polysaccharides (aPS) from Cretaceous chalk samples.
  • Interaction studies of pure calcite with aPS in solutions containing common seawater cations (K+, Ca2+, Mg2+, Sr2+).
  • Atomic and Chemical Force Microscopy (AFM and CFM) to analyze cation-polysaccharide-calcite interactions.

Main Results:

  • K+, Ca2+, and Sr2+ form weak outer sphere complexes with aPS, promoting affinity to calcite steps and terraces.
  • Mg2+ enhances stronger, longer aPS complex formation, leading to low affinity for calcite terraces and high affinity for steps.
  • Cation-polysaccharide complexation significantly modifies polymer effectiveness in regulating calcite growth.

Conclusions:

  • Cations play a crucial role in controlling the efficacy of polysaccharides in regulating calcite biomineralization.
  • The observed cation-polysaccharide interactions demonstrate a long-standing evolutionary strategy for mineral growth control.
  • Designing organic molecules with cation-complexing abilities is a viable strategy for controlling mineral formation in both natural and synthetic systems.