Vitamin C the red blood cells have evolved a mechanism to more efficiently utilize the vitamin C present in the body by recycling oxidized -dehydroascorbic acid (DHA) back into ascorbic acid for reuse by the body. The mechanism was not found to be present in mammals that synthesize their own vitamin C. Vitamin C megadosage is a term describing the consumption or injection of vitamin C in doses comparable to or higher than the amounts produced by the livers of mammals which are able to synthesize vitamin C. The theory behind this, although not the actual term, was described in 1970 in
Chemistry of ascorbic acid acid. American and Chinese researchers are competing to engineer a mutant that can carry out a one-pot fermentation directly from glucose to 2-KGA, bypassing both the need for a second fermentation and the need to reduce glucose to sorbitol. There exists a -ascorbic acid, which does not occur in nature but can be synthesized artificially. To be specific, -ascorbate is known to participate in many specific enzyme reactions that require the correct enantiomer (-ascorbate and not -ascorbate). -Ascorbic acid has a specific rotation of [α] = +23°. The traditional way to analyze the ascorbic acid content is the process of