highlights
The reason why urine is yellow was not known exactly.
The enzyme responsible for this had already been identified.
But scientists have now discovered its process.
Scientists have finally succeeded in explaining why the color of urine becomes yellow. There has been a lot of research on this matter and there have been many explanations for it, but a new study claims to have completely solved this puzzle. The surprising thing is that the answer to this question was being searched for a long time and scientists were failing to find out the reason.
In a study published in Nature Microbiology, Brantley Hall, assistant professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland, and his team explored the chain of events that causes urine to turn yellow. Not only this, he even found out why it took so much time to solve this mystery.
Urine is the last natural excretory substance of humans. It contains a lot of water and waste filtered from the kidneys and blood. It especially contains red blood cells or red cells which are dead. These cells work to transport oxygen in the blood through hemoglobin.
Urine turns yellow only in the special environment of the stomach, which was not possible to create in the laboratory. (Symbolic photo: Canva)
These red cells make a substance called heme. When red cells die, their heme triggers events that cause urine to turn yellow. Scientists already know that a chemical substance called Urbilin is responsible for the yellowness of urine. But they did not fully understand the process by which this happens.
In this study, Hall explained the role of gut bacteria in breaking down other substances made from heme and explained why urine is yellow. After six months of life, red blood cells die and form a substance called bilirubin. Stomach microbes convert bilirubin into a molecule that turns yellow in the presence of oxygen. This molecule is called urobilan.
Researchers have also identified the enzyme responsible for this study, which they have called bilirubin reductase or BilR. This produces urobilinogen in the large intestine, which later becomes urobilin in the presence of air.
Researchers say that studying the microorganisms of the stomach was a very difficult task, that is why it took so long to find out. Many such enzymes grow in the stomach without oxygen. That is why it was difficult to make it in the laboratory.
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Tags: Amazing news, Bizarre news, OMG News, Weird news
FIRST PUBLISHED: January 7, 2024, 18:23 IST
