Cell Specificity
When glucose enters a cell it is rapidly changed to glucose 6-phosphate, by hexokinase or glucokinase. The glucose cycle can occur in liver cells due to a liver specific enzyme glucose-6-phosphatase, which catalyse the dephosphorylation of glucose 6-phosphate back to glucose.
Glucose-6-phosphate is the product of glycogenolysis or gluconeogenesis, where the goal is to increase free glucose in the blood due body being in catabolic state. Other cells such as muscle and brain cells do not contain glucose 6-phosphatase. As a result, any glucose 6-phosphate produced in those cells is committed to cellular metabolic pathways, primarily pentose phosphate pathway or glycolysis.
Read more about this topic: Glucose Cycle
Famous quotes containing the word cell:
“What Mrs. Thatcher did for women was to demonstrate that if a woman had enough desire she could do what she wanted, do anything a man could do.... Mrs. Thatcher did not have one traditional feminine cell in her body.”
—Julie Burchill (b. 1960)