Bioelements and Bioelementology in Pharmacology and Nutrition: Fundamental and Practical Aspects

Abstract

Despite the biological role of chemical elements has come under intensive studying in the last decades, the “lack of multidisciplinary approach has been the Achilles heel of biological trace element research” [1]. The desire to integrate the "organic" and "inorganic" approach in studying the biological role of chemical elements is observed in a number of fundamental works. Since 2003 we put forward and develop the concept of bioelements and bioelementol‐ ogy as an integrative scientific direction [2, 3]. Bioelement is the elemental functioning unit of living matter, which is a biologically active complex of chemical elements as atoms, ions and nanoparticles with organic compounds of exogenous (primary) or biogenous (secondary) origin. Bioelements include any chemical structures found in living nature, but which do not have a set of fundamental properties of living things: metabolism, variability, reproduction and heredity. The assembly of bioelements can be called “bioelementome”. We propose to subdivide bioelements into simple (atoms, ions, among them structural elements C, H, N, O, P, S, Si, Ca, electrolytic K, Na, Ca, Cl, Mg, enzymatic Mg, Fe, Zn, Cu, Mn, Co, Cr, Mo, Se, Sn, F, I, Ni, V, B, and water as the universal solvent), and complicated ones, consisting of the abovementioned 68 molecules (8 of them are nucleosides, which compose DNA and RNA, 20 are natural amino acids necessary for protein synthesis, at least 32 glycans, 8 types of lipids). Also, bioelements can be subdivided into primary, i.e. those which could exist before the origin of life, and secondary, i.e. those which have formed as production of living organisms.