[shmoo597]

I am trying to gather all the elements needed to make a human being, and put it on display in my living room.

I am using this as my basis:

http://web2.iadfw.net/uthman/elements_of_body.html

I am looking on suggestions for what you think would be the best way to assemble these elements. Any ideas for the gas?

[pantone159]

I'm pretty sure many of those elements are not NEEDED to make up a human, they just happen to have been collected there.  (E.g., Cs, La, Sc, Au are probably not used by anything.)

[enahs]

I'm pretty sure many of those elements are not NEEDED to make up a human, they just happen to have been collected there.  (E.g., Cs, La, Sc, Au are probably not used by anything.)

They are all found in the body, but not of significant biological importance.

[shmoo597]

Well that is ok. I want to be able to point to something and say - "if that jar of elements over there was arranged in a slightly different way, it would be a human being."

Any suggestions on what type of molecules to use? or should I use pure elements? What about the gases? Any ideas?

[billnotgatez]

http://www.boston.com/globe/search/stories/health/how_and_why/011298.htm

An adult body is 50 to 65 percent water

So at least much of the hydrogen and oxygen are combined as liquid water and do not exist as gases. I would assume that most all of the gases in that list are components of compounds that are not gases.

 

[Yggdrasil]

This site may give you some ideas about element collection and storage:

http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/index.html

Also, this thread has some information about element collecting:

http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=1806.0

I'm not sure if these are exactly what you are looking for, but they are at least a start.

[constant thinker]

I agree with enahs. The table lists lead as being the body. I'm sure it is found, but I don't think it has any biological significance. Same with cadmium, barium, selenium, arsenic, and uranium; all of those are toxic to the human body, and have no biological role (the more important of the 2 reasons) as far as I'm aware of.

I'd stick with carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen as the most important samples. Just look up the structures of various amino acids, vitamins, and what's on the back of those "complete multivitamin" bottles.

[Edit] Turns out selenium does have biological role.

[Yggdrasil]

I would add sulfur and phosphorous to the list of most important elements, sulfur being in two of the twenty protein amino acids and phosphorous an essential component of DNA (with various other important biological roles).  Many metals also play essential roles like iron (present in hemoglobin, cytochrome c, and many other proteins), zinc (often an essential part of DNA-binding proteins), cobalt (in the vitamin cobalamin, essential for nucleotide synthesis), and others.

Selenium has a biological role and is an important cofactor for some enzymes such as glutathione peroxidase (involved in antioxidant activity).  While selenium is toxic in moderate quantities, it is still an essential micronutrient.  So, if you completely remove selenium from your diet, you will have some problems.  Also remember that anything, even water, is toxic at high enough concentrations.