Humans Make Ozone

MondoMor writes "Spotted this article at the Scripps Research Institute. Apparently humans have the ability to manufacture ozone, and do so as an immune response. Suppose we took a bunch of lawyers to the south pole, right under the ozone hole..."

Comments

Singlet oxygen from immune cells!

[juushin]

That immune cells have been found to produce singlet oxygen is much more interesting, I think, than the finding that bodies produce ozone.

Dude, if you thought that ozone is bad news, singlet oxygen is highly toxic to just about everything biological.

Cancer?

[planux]

If I'm not mistaken, oxidants cause mutations in the DNA of your cells -- and if that mutation happens to occur in some vital bit of the DNA, you get cancer. Cancer cells are, fundamently, normal cells that have gone awry and reproduce extremely quickly. That's why chemotherapy is used to treat cancer -- chemotherapy targets fast-reproducing cells (also why it makes your hair fall out -- hair cells are another fast reproducing cell type). In any case, if your body produces oxidants to fight germs, couldn't those same oxidants be causing, as a side affect, mutations in your DNA? Maybe the dramatic rise in cancer rates over the past x*10^2 years isn't due entirely to our longer life spans -- maybe it's also, in part, due to the fact that we live much closer together and regularly infect and are infected by our family members/cow-workers/fellow K-mart shoppers. The common cold a cause of cancer? Maybe not so far fetched. And maybe it's the body's oxidant-loaded response to things like cigarettes that causes cancer -- not the cigarette chemicals themselves (though I am very poorly acquainted with cigarette research). Also, what impact would those anti-oxidant drinks/pills/suppositories that are all the fad these days have on your body's ability to fight off diseases?

Re:bad for them, goodish for us

[forkboy]

For example the enzyme catalase converts hydrogen peroxide into water and hydrogen, while superoxide dismutase is a free radical scavenger.

Interesting....those are the two main results of exposure to ionizing radiation, (aside from damage to cellular structures directly) the cleavage of water molecules in cells to form hydrogen peroxide (toxic to cells) and formation free radicals (causes chemical changes in DNA molecules). Why aren't these two enzymes used in treatment of radiation exposure? Are they difficult to synthesize or unstable or something?