Phospholipids form the interface of every body cell. This page describes their structure, gives intake figures for the bulk mineral phosphorus, and reproduces the two authorized wordings unchanged.
To the detailed versionA phospholipid is a molecule with two faces. One end seeks water, the other avoids it. From this contradiction arises the structure that separates every living cell from the outside.
Chemically, it begins with a short glycerol backbone with three attachment points. Two of them carry long fatty-acid chains, the third a phosphate group, which in turn carries a small organic residue — choline, ethanolamine, serine or inositol. The chains are nonpolar and avoid water. The phosphate group is charged and attracts water.
If such molecules are placed in an aqueous environment, they arrange themselves on their own: the chains turn toward one another, the phosphate heads face outward. A film of two layers forms, about five nanometers thick. This film is the cell membrane. No enzyme assembles it — the arrangement results from the physics of the molecules involved.
The charged head group lies exactly where the cell comes into contact with its environment. It binds water molecules, it carries a negative charge, and it helps determine which proteins can attach at this point. Without the phosphate, the layer would not be an ordered film but a shapeless droplet of fat.
The first of the two wordings that the European Commission has authorized for phosphorus refers to this relationship. It is fixed in its wording and may neither be shortened nor rewritten: Phosphorus contributes to normal function of cell membranes. In accordance with Regulation (EU) No 432/2012.
The bilayer is not rigid. Individual lipids exchange their position within the same layer millions of times per second. The switch from one layer to the other, by contrast, hardly occurs, because the charged head would have to pass through the fatty interior; there are dedicated transport proteins for that.
How mobile the layer is depends on the length and saturation of the fatty-acid chains and on the embedded cholesterol. Unsaturated chains have a kink and allow more room; saturated chains lie more closely together. Cholesterol pushes itself between the chains and balances the two states against each other.
Phosphorus enters the body almost exclusively as phosphate. In the small intestine it is taken up partly passively via the spaces between cells, partly actively via sodium-dependent transporters. From a mixed diet, around two-thirds of the amount consumed reaches the bloodstream; from purely plant sources less, because part of it is present there as phytate.
In the blood, phosphate circulates dissolved and is taken up by the cells. Its linkage with glycerol and fatty acids to form the finished phospholipid then takes place at the membrane of the endoplasmic reticulum. From there, transport routes distribute the new lipids to the cell's remaining membranes.
This description reproduces a metabolic pathway. It is not itself an authorized claim; the permitted wordings appear unchanged in the two blocks further below, each next to the tissue to which they refer.
The Union Register lists several entries for this bulk mineral. Colemanitsaum takes up two of them, because they correspond to the two tissues this page is about. Each entry belongs to phosphorus alone and is therefore reproduced individually.
The outer boundary of a cell does not consist of a solid wall but of two mobile layers of lipids. The phosphate head of each individual molecule points toward the aqueous side and maintains the order of the layer.
The same construction is found not only on the outside but also at the inner membranes: at the cell nucleus, at the mitochondria, at the Golgi apparatus. The phosphate share is the same in all of them.
In accordance with Regulation (EU) No 432/2012
The second tissue to which an authorized entry refers has nothing to do with lipids. In enamel and dentin, phosphate is present as part of a mineral composite in which, together with calcium, it forms an ordered structure.
The wording speaks of maintenance. It thereby describes the persistence of a state that the body maintains anyway with sufficient intake — and it says nothing about individual findings.
In accordance with Regulation (EU) No 432/2012
Included are an annotated drawing of the bilayer, the proportions of the individual lipid classes, content tables for thirty-four products, a comparison of naturally bound and added phosphate, as well as the source references for both register entries with their conditions of use.
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