Digestion and Absorption of Carbohydrate

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Describe the digestion and absorption of carbohydrates and the regulation of blood glucose Carbohydrate is a polymer made up of monomers called glucose. There are two types of glucose namely alpha glucose and beta glucose. Carbohydrate is the main substrate which produces energy for any mechanism such as metabolic reactions, active transport and the movement of vesicles. In living organism such as human, carbohydrate is stored as glycogen where mostly be found in muscle. However, glycogen cannot diffuse through the phospholipid bilayer of the cell membrane so it must be broken down into smaller molecules known as glucose which can diffuse through the glucose co-transport channel protein spun across the phospholipid bilayer. Digestion of carbohydrate is firstly occurs in our mouth when we consume food where enzyme carbohydrase breaks down the carbohydrate into smaller chunk and further transported in the small intestine where it is broken into glucose as the final product of the final digestion. Sometimes, when we do not consume any food glycogen which is a shorter version of carbohydrate in the muscle are broken down producing glucose for respiring cells to produce adenosine triphosphate in the process called glycogenesis. During digestion the 1, 4-glycosidic bonds and 1, 6-glycocidic bonds are broken down by series of hydrolysis reactions. When energy is required by respiring cells, glucose is absorbed or assimilated in the small intestine where other biological molecules also being absorbed such as amino acids and useful fats. The structure of small intestine helps the absorption of glucose more efficient in such a way of the presence of microvilli which are fingerlike projection of membrane on the surface of the small intestine. These microvilli has a very large surface area to volume ratio so as Fick’s Law states the rate of diffusion is directly proportional

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