Function
This enzyme is required since fatty acids cannot cross the mitochondrial membranes without assistance. The fatty acid is firstly bound to CoA and may cross the external mitochondrial membrane. It then exchanges the CoA for carnitine by the action of the enzyme carnitine palmitoyl transferase I. The complex then enters the mitochondrial matrix thanks to facilitated diffusion by carnitine-acylcarnitine translocase. Here, the acyl-cartinine complex is disrupted by carnitine palmitoyl transferase II and the fatty acid rebinds to CoA. Carnitine then diffuses back across the membrane by carnitine-acylcarnitine translocase into the mitochondrial intermembrane space. This is called the carnitine shuttle system.
Read more about this topic: Carnitine-acylcarnitine Translocase
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“Nobody seriously questions the principle that it is the function of mass culture to maintain public morale, and certainly nobody in the mass audience objects to having his morale maintained.”
—Robert Warshow (1917–1955)
“The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.”
—Leonardo Da Vinci (1425–1519)
“The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)