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Trace metals within the human body include iron, lithium, zinc, copper, chromium, nickel, cobalt, vanadium, molybdenum, manganese and others. [1] [2] [3] Some of the trace metals are needed by living organisms to function properly and are depleted through the expenditure of energy by various metabolic processes of living organisms.
In humans, copper is essential to the proper functioning of organs and metabolic processes. Also, in humans, copper helps maintain the nervous system, immune system, brain development, and activates genes, as well as assisting in the production of connective tissues, blood vessels, and energy. [1]
Selenium, which is an essential element for animals and prokaryotes and is a beneficial element for many plants, is the least-common of all the elements essential to life. [ 3 ] [ 63 ] Selenium acts as the catalytic center of several antioxidant enzymes, such as glutathione peroxidase , [ 11 ] and plays a wide variety of other biological roles .
A trace element is a chemical element of a minute quantity, a trace amount, especially used in referring to a micronutrient, [1] [2] but is also used to refer to minor elements in the composition of a rock, or other chemical substance. In nutrition, trace elements are classified into two groups: essential trace elements, and non-essential trace ...
Twenty chemical elements are known to be required to support human biochemical processes by serving structural and functional roles, and there is evidence for a few more. [1] [9] Oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen are the most abundant elements in the body by weight and make up about 96% of the weight of a human body.
Vitamins and minerals are essential to the proper functioning and maintenance of the human body. [114] There are 20 trace elements and minerals that are essential in small quantities to body function and overall human health. [114] Iron deficiency is the most common inadequate nutrient worldwide, affecting approximately 2 billion people. [115]
Plants tend not to use vitamins, although minerals are required. [8] [17] Structure of the Mn 4 O 5 Ca core of the oxygen-evolving site in plants, illustrating one of many roles of the trace mineral, manganese. [18] Some seven trace elements are essential to plant growth, although often in trace quantities. [citation needed]
It is present in every type of cell in the brain as the brain itself has a very high energy requirement and by extension a very high iron requirement. [13] In animals, iron plays a very important role in transporting oxygen from the lungs to tissues and CO 2 from tissues to the lungs.