Comment on Why do some fruit produce human compatible hormones?
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It’s all just chemistry. Many compounds/molecules/whatever basically self-assemble and then from there the kinds of reactions are limited by chemistry.
From there evolution took over and found ways of doing things. Once it found those ways, it got past to everything that came after. Melatonin originally evolved in bacteria as an antioxidant.
From there it became useful for other things like regulating growth and as stress response as well as managing circadian rhythms and such like.
python@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Another fun thing about Melatonin is also that nocturnal animals produce it basically the same way - dim light makes them produce melatonin while bright light flushes the melatonin out of their system. The melatonin itself just affects their nervous system in the opposite way and acts like a stimulant, so they get less sleepy when they have a lot of it. I think that’s kinda neat and maybe a bit counterintuitive if you have never thought about it before. I sure know that I would have either expected nocturnal animals to have their own separate compound or to produce melatonin at daytime.