Vitamins: an evolutionary perspective.

Access to vitamins and the genetic endownment to utilize them maintain vitamin-dependent metabolic homeostasis in heterotrophs. Whereas the extent of adverse nutritional experiences has declined in modern human societies, phenocopies of deficiency diseases persist; accordingly, they have high heritability. The "vitamin-responsive hereditary metabolic diseases" identify DNA that specifies conserved apoenzyme domains interacting with coenzyme and the cellular processes providing access to coenzymes. Could heterozygosity at those loci also be a determinant of disease (or health) under certain circumstances?