Info on Vitamin K

By Dominic Bowen


First IMPORTANT. The body only soaks up five percent of vitamins from pills or tablets the rest is dumped down the toilet. Find out how you can absorb 98%. Glance at the bottom of the current page.

Introduction Vitamin K is an essential fat-soluble micronutrient, which is required for a novel post-translational chemical modification in a miniscule group of proteins with calcium-binding properties, known generally as vitamin K-dependent proteins or Gla proteins. This far, the only unquestioned role of vitamin K in health is in the upkeep of normal coagulation. The vitamin K dependent coagulation proteins are synthesized in the liver and comprise factors II, VII, IX, and X, which have a haemostatic role ( i.e. They are procoagulants that arrest and forestall bleeding ), and proteins C and S, which have an anticoagulant role ( i.e. They hold back the clotting process ). Despite this duality of function, the overriding effect of nutritive vitamin K deficiency is a bleeding disposition because of the relative immobility of the procoagulant proteins.

Vitamin K-dependent proteins synthesized by other tissues include the bone protein osteocalcin and matrix Gla protein, though their functions wait to be explained. Biological role of vitamin K is the family name for a collection of fat-soluble compounds which have a standard 2-methyl-1,4-naphthoquinone nucleus but differ in the structures of a side chain at the 3-position.

Vitamin K are synthesized by plants and bacteria. In plants the only significant molecular form is phylloquinone ( vitamin K1 ) that has a phytyl side chain.

Bacteria synthesize a family of compounds called menaquinones ( vitamin K2 ), which have side chains based fully on repeating unsaturated 5-carbon ( prenyl ) units. These are delegated menaquinone-n ( MK-n ) according to the number ( n ) of prenyl units. Some bacteria also synthesize menaquinones in which a few of the double bonds is saturated. The compound 2-methyl-1,4-naphthoquinone ( common name menadione ) could be accepted as a provitamin because vertebrates can change it to MK-4 by adding a 4-prenyl side chain at the 3-position.

The biological role of vitamin K is to act as a cofactor for a specific carboxylation reaction that transforms selective glutamate. .




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