Occasionally, new information arises that shows some vitamins to be of greater consequence than previously thought, often because they deal with crucial functions throughout your body.

That's true with vitamin B12, not only because it directly influences metabolism in every one of your cells throughout your brain and nervous system, as it regulates and synthesizes DNA and how your blood is formed, but because of new findings that suggest vitamin B12 may be far more important to microbial life than previously thought.

The evidence, revealed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, shows that vitamin B12, also called cobalamin, may in fact play a "pivotal" role in cell growth and coordination of cells in complex multicellular systems.