Cyanide is Important in Biology
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When people hear the word cyanide , they may think of scenes in spy shows where someone ends himself by biting into a cyanide capsule and is dead in five seconds. Actually, those delivery systems do not work that fast. There are industrial uses for cyanide that include photography, electroplating, making plastics, and many more. It is inside you. Cyanide is an inorganic compound that has numerous sources, even fruit seeds (it takes quite a few to have a bad effect). Now it has been discovered to be biologically important. Hydrogen cyanide, Wikimedia Commons / Benjah-bmm27 (PD, background colors added) It is interesting how something that is lethal in small amounts is beneficial in even smaller amounts. (Doing the research in the first place is extremely difficult because it has to be done on living subjects.) Cyanide poisoning kills by stopping cells from using oxygen, but as a biological function, it helps protect cells during medical events when they are deprived of oxygen. There ar...