A review of oxidants and antioxidants in biological systems

Year 2020, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 64 - 72, 29.03.2020

İmge Kunter , Niloufar Zabib , Muberra Kosar

Abstract

Oxidants are any agent capable of removing electron from another molecule in a course of a redox reaction. When it comes to biological systems free-radicals, especially reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) are involved in oxidation reactions. Both endogenous and exogenous factors can contribute to free-radical formation. Fortunately, an endogenous balance between free-radicals and antioxidant systems is present in the biological system. Despite the common belief that free-radicals are destructive agents, nowadays it has been proven that free-radicals such as ROS and RNS are greatly involved in signalling pathways and immune function. The destructive effect of antioxidants becomes significantly important only when this intrinsic balance is disturbed in favour of free-radicals, a condition known as oxidative stress. Over-production of free-radicals in oxidative stress can have deleterious effects on the biological systems in virtue of their interaction with important biological molecules such as proteins, lipids, and DNA. Favourably antioxidants are available to prevent the over-accumulation of free radicals and consequently their harmful effects by scavenging them. Various classification attributes have been suggested for antioxidants, amongst which, classification on the basis of their mechanism of action as primary and secondary antioxidant or their classification on the basis of their enzymatic activity as enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidants are the most famous ones. The objective of this review article is to provide the basic information required for the understanding of reactive oxygen species and their formation, antioxidants terminology, their classification and the mechanism by which the antioxidants are involved in counteracting harmful effect of oxidant in biological systems. 

Keywords

oxidative stress, ROS, RNS, antioxidants in biological systems

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