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Asked by lgs11yarnw to Derek, Elaine, Heather, Keith, Bimpe on 17 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by amberg, izzykay44.
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Heather Eyre answered on 17 Jun 2013:
Hormones are made by lots of different organs, and there are a few different types of hormone.
Peptide hormones, like insulin and growth hormone, start off as code in your DNA. A peptide is a string of amino-acids, like those found in food. It’s like a small protein.
The part of the DNA that contains the codes for the hormone is copied, into RNA, which is then copied into a peptide. The peptide made at this point doesn’t usually work, it needs cutting up first, this is called enzymatic cleavage. Some peptides are cut up more than once before they work fully.
Other hormones are made of fat and these are made from other types of fat by enzymes.
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Elaine Marshall answered on 18 Jun 2013:
If I can add a wee bit to Heather’s answer –
Hormones are made in several ways and are generally in response to the cells environment or as part of the developmental process. Once they have been made they are released to effect neighboring cells or into the circulatory system to reach cells far away from the cell they were originally made in.
For hormones derived from fat molecules (cholesterol) , specific cells will contain different sets of enzymes capable of converting cholesterol into different hormones depending of which genes for those enzymes are switched on in a particular cell. For examples, in the lining of the womb (endometrium) although all cells may see cholesterol, the cells present in the endometrium can make at least 5 different hormones and the levels of these hormones change very quickly depending on the cells environment. It’s a bit like giving everyone the same ingredients to bake a cake but we all make a different one and some are eaten up quicker than others!
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Derek Ball answered on 18 Jun 2013:
This is an interesting open question, you can answer the question as Heather and Elaine have explained in relation to the mechanism, e.g. peptide hormones such as insulin and glucagon require DNA to encode them. Another way to interpret your question would be the stimulus for producing hormones such as insulin would be through a rise in your blood glucose. The rise in blood glucose (through eating food) stimulates the pancreas to release insulin from the organ into the circulation. Other hormones are produced due to a stimulus of our central nervous system, for example adrenaline (also know as epinephrine) is released from the adrenal glands during excitement such as a roller coaster ride.
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naima123 commented on :
They travel through the blood until they reach a cell with a receptor that they fit in, then a molecule attaches to the receptor and sends a signal inside the cell. The signal may tell the cell to produce a certain protein or to multiply.
Once Hormones are realized into the system, they are distributed throughout the body. The protein hormones are water soluble and circulate in free forms. This process immediately exposes these water-soluble hormones to circulating catabolizing enzymes giving them an expected half life of seconds to minutes.