Metabolism describes the processes by which the organism gets energy and creates its main components. It is responsible for the health and survival of the organism. There are two main metabolic pathways: Anabolism and Catabolism. Anabolism covers the pathways that convert the food the individual takes into biological building blocks such as lipids and proteins. On the other hand, catabolism breaks down these molecules to create and provide energy, often in form of ATP molecules.
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Individuals’ metabolism depends highly on their energy and carbon source. Organism can be provided in energy from sunlight or molecules and get their carbon material from organic or inorganic compounds. Every metabolic pathway is based on oxydo-reduction reaction and exchanges of electrons between molecules.
In catabolic pathways, enzymes break down large macromolecules into small elements through oxidation cascades. Extracellular enzymes digest biopolymers and proteins into monosaccharaides and amino-acids respectively that can be further taken up by metabolic pathways in the cell.
Metabolism studies, and thus catabolism, can be subdivided regarding the element the pathways creates or transform. Thus, in animals, two important pathways are the citric acid cycle and the glycolysis. The citric acid cycle or tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA) or Krebs cycle is responsible for the release of energy via multiple chemical and enzymatic reactions that oxidize carbohydrates, fats and proteins derivatives such as citric acid. Glycolysis also frees energy thanks to oxidations from glucose molecules. In both case energy is transferred in form of ATP molecules that can be further used by many enzymes.
Energy can be further obtained via the electron transport chain that take electrons generated in previous stages to create a proton gradient that will activate the ATP synthase which in turn creates ATP.
In Anabolic pathways biologic building blocks such as amino acids, acetyl-CoA or simple sugars such as glucose are converted to proteins, fatty acids or polysaccharides to meet the organism survival purposes. These pathways highly depend on the organism and the organ that have a need of these macromolecules.
Metabolic pathways are also regulated to maintain homeostasis. The glucose level in the blood for example is controlled by the activity of a set of hormones such as insulin.
Diabetes, or diabetes mellitus (MD), gathers metabolic disorders showing abnormally high levels of glucose in the blood. There are two main diabetes. Type 1 is due to the scarce production of insulin by pancreas and can be treated with insulin injection. Type 2 diabetes comes from a resistance of the receptors to insulin. Diabetes’ research is increasing as these disorders seem to rise and kill millions of people each year.
Metabolism is also studied as a biotechnological tool. Eukaryote and prokaryotes various pathways offer the possibility to produce molecules of interest through metabolic engineering of cells instead of chemical industry. This approach is more and more appealing for increase of yields compared to energy consumption and waste production.
