How the body’s ’missing link’ fights cancer and dementia

Scientists have discovered the ‘missing link’ in our body that influences our chances of developing cancer and dementia.

It’s all to do with queuosine, a micronutrient that is vital for brain health, memory, stress response, and cancer defence.  Although it was discovered in the 1970s, scientists couldn’t understand how queuosine got into our cells so they could ward off these chronic health problems.

But now researchers at the University of Florida have uncovered the missing link: a gene called SLC35F2, which they described as the gateway into our cells.

Our bodies can’t produce queuosine—we get it from a range of foods, such as milk, fermented foods, coconut water and tomatoes—but it plays a key role in how the body builds proteins. It alters transfer RNA, the molecules responsible for helping cells interpret DNA and produce proteins correctly.

“It’s like a nutrient that fine-tunes how your body reads your genes,” explained Valérie de Crécy-Lagard, one of the researchers.  But how it feeds our cells has remained a mystery until now.

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