15 Apr What is folate trap?

What is folate trap?

In simple words, it’s a condition in which folate is trapped and cannot be used for any cellular processes.

But why does this happen?

It happens when we have vitamin B12 deficiency.

But how is vitamin B deficiency related to folate being trapped?

In order to understand this, we have to first think about the main function of vitamin B 12. Vitamin B12 in its active form is called Methylcobalamine. It can donate its methly group to homocysteine and homocysteine converts to Methionine. In this process, after losing its methyl group, Methylcobalamine converts to Cobalamine. This Cobalamine has to be regenerated as Methylcobalamine for this process to continue.

This regeneration of Cobalamin requires methyl group from another compound and that compound is Methyltetrahydrofolate. When Methyltetrahydrofolate donates methly group to Cobalamine, Cobalamin converts to Methyltetrahydrofolate and Methyltetrahydrofolate converts to Tetrahydrofolate. This Tetrahydrofolate is used for DNA synthesis and in the process, we regenerate Tetrahydrofolate.

So we can see that for DNA synthesis, we require tetrahydrafolate, and it can be formed only when Methyltetrahydrofolate can donate its methyl group to Cobalamin.

If there is vitamin B12 deficiency, then in that case, Methycobalamin cannot convert into Cobalamin, which means Methyltetrahydrofolate cannot donate its methyl group to Cobalamin. So what happens is, despite having adequate amount of folate, we cannot use it for DNA synthesis when there is vitamin B 12 deficiency. So folate becomes trapped.

I hope you understood the concept of folate trap.

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