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Re:Why are plants green? To reduce the noise in photosynthesis by smiley1437 on Saturday October 01, 2022 @09:19PM (#33051799)
Free radicals are extremely reactive and can form bonds in undesirable ways in cellular chemistry, which is generally bad for the organism, potentially causing all sorts of cell damage.

Cells produce anti-oxidant defenses to regulate free radicals such as the delightfully named "Superoxide Dismutase" enzyme:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superoxide_dismutase

Re:Why are plants green? To reduce the noise in photosynthesis by anonymous_sorry on Sunday October 02, 2022 @02:42AM (#33053524)
As an aside, there is poor evidence that consumption or topical application of anything artificially high in anti-oxidants does any good for healthy people, although you see "antioxidants" used to sell crap all the time.

Maintaining the right balance between free radicals and anti-oxidants is the sort of thing biology is pretty good at on its own. Trying to put a finger on the scales in one direction or another is probably pointless at best.

Re:Why are plants green? To reduce the noise in photosynthesis by Ekaros on Sunday October 02, 2022 @03:10AM (#33053679)
When thinking about it it seems pretty weird. Wouldn't most free radicals either enter via lungs or digestive tracts? And those will have plenty of stuff to react before any anti-oxidant can get to work... And anti-oxidants spreading through body on other hand seems bit worrying.
Re:Why are plants green? To reduce the noise in photosynthesis by tpm on Sunday October 02, 2022 @05:46AM (#33054482)
Most free radicals are products of reactions inside the body and the body does have mechanisms to deal with them, even if not 100% sometimes.