Vitamin amino acids. Most vitamins are not single molecules, but groups of related molecules called vitamers. For example, vitamin E consists of four tocopherols and four tocotrienols. The thirteen vitamins required by human metabolism are: vitamin A (retinols and carotenoids), vitamin B (thiamine), vitamin B (riboflavin), vitamin B (niacin), vitamin B (pantothenic acid), vitamin B (pyridoxine), vitamin B (biotin), vitamin B (folic acid or folate), vitamin B (cobalamins), vitamin C (ascorbic acid), vitamin D (calciferols), vitamin E (tocopherols and tocotrienols), and vitamin K (quinones). Vitamins have diverse biochemical functions. Some forms of vitamin A function as regulators of cell and tissue
Vitamin C the inexpensive mass-production of vitamin C. In 1934 Hoffmann–La Roche trademarked synthetic vitamin C under the brand name Redoxon and began to market it as a dietary supplement. In 1907 a laboratory animal model which would help to identify the antiscorbutic factor was discovered by the Norwegian physicians Axel Holst and Theodor Frølich, who when studying shipboard beriberi, fed guinea pigs their test diet of grains and flour and were surprised when scurvy resulted instead of beriberi. By luck, this species did not make its own vitamin C, whereas mice and rats do. In 1912, the Polish biochemist Casimir Funk