Milk evolved as a means of providing for the postnatal needs of the developing mammalian neonate. Any perception that milk is a simple, homogeneous fluid does not adequately acknowledge the remarkable array of complex activities and functionalities of its constituent components. Milk composition and the components of milk can be studied and discussed from a range of perspectives, such as their importance to the nursing young, their biochemical, molecular, and physicochemical properties, the mechanisms that are responsible for their synthesis and secretion in the mammary gland, the factors that regulate and affect their variable presence in milk, and their importance as a food source for humans. Each of.
