Endocrine Abstracts

Vitamin D is photosynthesized in all forms of life from the phytoplankton 750 mya. Evolutionary pressures due to variation in climate play an important role in shaping phenotypic variation and influence variation in phenotypes. Migration out-of-Africa and change of living latitude placed human vit D as part of an evolutionary complex that adapted hominids to changing u.v. radiation. The ‘vit D hypothesis’ to explain skin pigmentation is based on the observation that ...