Function
The glucose cycle is required for one of the liver functions; the homeostasis of glucose in the blood stream. When blood glucose levels are in excess, glucose can be stored in the liver as glycogen. When glucose levels in the blood stream are low the glycogen can be catabolised and glucose may re-enter the blood stream.
The catabolic process occurs at the nonreducing end of glycogen. A phosphate group breaks the bond between C 1 of a glucose ring and the O that connects it to the next(phosphorolysis). One glucose unit is thus split off. Glycogen (with n glucose units) is converted into G-1-P(a PO4 group now attaches to C1 where O used to ) and glycogen (with n-1 glucose units) by enzyme glycogen phosphorylase. G-1-P is then converted into G-6-P by enzyme phosphoglucomutase. A water molecule hydrolyses G-6-P to glucose, the enzyme is glucose-6-phosphatase.
Read more about this topic: Glucose Cycle
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“We are thus able to distinguish thinking as the function which is to a large extent linguistic.”
—Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1934)
“Our father has an even more important function than modeling manhood for us. He is also the authority to let us relax the requirements of the masculine model: if our father accepts us, then that declares us masculine enough to join the company of men. We, in effect, have our diploma in masculinity and can go on to develop other skills.”
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“The mother’s and father’s attitudes toward the child correspond to the child’s own needs.... Mother has the function of making him secure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)