Function
5α-reductases convert testosterone, the male sex hormone, into the more potent dihydrotestosterone:
-
Testosterone.
-
Dihydrotestosterone
Note the major difference — the Δ4,5 double-bond on the A (leftmost) ring. (The other differences between the diagrams are unrelated to chemical structure.)
These enzymes also participate in the creation of such neurosteroids as allopregnanolone and THDOC.
Read more about this topic: 5-alpha Reductase
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The intension of a proposition comprises whatever the proposition entails: and it includes nothing else.... The connotation or intension of a function comprises all that attribution of this predicate to anything entails as also predicable to that thing.”
—Clarence Lewis (1883–1964)
“Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information—hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“As a medium of exchange,... worrying regulates intimacy, and it is often an appropriate response to ordinary demands that begin to feel excessive. But from a modernized Freudian view, worrying—as a reflex response to demand—never puts the self or the objects of its interest into question, and that is precisely its function in psychic life. It domesticates self-doubt.”
—Adam Phillips, British child psychoanalyst. “Worrying and Its Discontents,” in On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, p. 58, Harvard University Press (1993)