Is the antioxidant activity of Apo-AIM non-specific?
While AiG concedes that Apo-AIM has gained a new function, the antioxidant ability, they contend that this comes at the expense of specificity. “Now in gaining an anti-oxidant activity, the enzyme has lost activity for making HDLs. So the mutant enzyme has sacrificed a lot of specificity. Since antioxidant activity is not a very specific activity (a great variety of simple chemicals will act as antioxidants), it would seem that the net result of this mutation has been a huge loss of specificity, or, in other words, information. This is exactly as we would expect with a random change.” As we have seen, Apo-AIM has not lost the ability to make HDLs, so it has not sacrificed specificity. Indeed, as Apo-AIM HDL particles are more effective at promoting cholesterol removal from cells, one could reasonably claim that there has been an increase in specificity. However, is the antioxidant activity of Apo-AIM non-specific? Antioxidant activity is possessed by a number of small molecules, but so
