Function
Organisms that cannot easily and quickly remove ammonia usually have to convert it to some other substance, like urea or uric acid, which are much less toxic. Insufficiency of the urea cycle occurs in some genetic disorders (inborn errors of metabolism), and in liver failure. The result of liver failure is accumulation of nitrogenous waste, mainly ammonia, which leads to hepatic encephalopathy.
Read more about this topic: Urea Cycle
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The function of comedy is to dispel ... unconsciousness by turning the searchlight of the keenest moral and intellectual analysis right on to it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“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)