News tagged with cell metabolism
Study dusts sugar coating off little-known regulation in cells
In Alzheimer's disease, brain neurons become clogged with tangled proteins. Scientists suspect these tangles arise partly due to malfunctions in a little-known regulatory system within cells. Now, researchers have dramatically ...
Apr 16, 2012 |
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Cyborg snail produces electricity
(PhysOrg.com) -- First it was grapes, then cockroaches, and now snails have become the latest organism to generate electricity through an implanted biofuel cell. The process works similarly in all three situations: ...
Mar 15, 2012 |
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Scientists discover animal-like urea cycle in tiny diatoms in the ocean
Scientists have discovered that marine diatoms, tiny phytoplankton abundant in the sea, have an animal-like urea cycle, and that this cycle enables the diatoms to efficiently use carbon and nitrogen from their ...
May 11, 2011 |
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The future of metabolic engineering -- designer molecules, cells and microorganisms
(PhysOrg.com) -- Will we one day design and create molecules, cells and microorganisms that produce specific chemical products from simple, readily-available, inexpensive starting materials? Will the synthetic ...
Dec 02, 2010 |
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Chili peppers come with blood pressure benefits
For those with high blood pressure, chili peppers might be just what the doctor ordered, according to a study reported in the August issue of Cell Metabolism. While the active ingredient that gives the peppers their heat - ...
Medicine & Health / Medical research
Aug 03, 2010 |
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Molecular spectroscopy tracks living mammalian cells in real time as they differentiate
Knowing how a living cell works means knowing how the chemistry inside the cell changes as the functions of the cell change. Protein phosphorylation, for example, controls everything from cell proliferation ...
Chemistry / Analytical Chemistry
Apr 30, 2012 |
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Insulin, nutrition prevent blood stem cell differentiation in fruit flies
UCLA stem cell researchers have shown that insulin and nutrition keep blood stem cells from differentiating into mature blood cells in Drosophila, the common fruit fly, a finding that has implications for studying inflammatory ...
Mar 12, 2012 |
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Metabolic errors can spell doom for DNA
Many critical cell functions depend on a class of molecules called purines, which form half of the building blocks of DNA and RNA, and are a major component of the chemicals that store a cell’s energy. ...
Jan 31, 2012 |
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New test spots early signs of mucopolysaccharidoses -- inherited metabolic disorders
A team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Zacharon Pharmaceuticals, have developed a simple, reliable test for identifying biomarkers for mucopolysaccharidoses ...
Jan 08, 2012 |
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Aging-related degeneration caused by defects of energy metabolism in tissue stem cells?
Aging-related tissue degeneration can be caused by mitochondrial dysfunction in tissue stem cells. The research group of Professor Anu Suomalainen Wartiovaara in Helsinki University, with their collaborators in Max Planck ...
Jan 03, 2012 |
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Decades-old conclusion about energy-making pathway of cyanobacteria is corrected
A generally accepted 44-year-old assumption about how certain kinds of bacteria make energy and synthesize cell materials has been shown to be incorrect by a team of scientists led by Donald Bryant, the Ernest ...
Dec 15, 2011 |
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Scientists elevate little-studied cellular mechanism to potential drug target
For years, science has generally considered the phosphorylation of proteins -- the insertion of a phosphorous group into a protein that turns it on or off -- as perhaps the factor regulating a range of cellular processes ...
Dec 11, 2011 |
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How old yeast cells send off their daughter cells without the baggage of old age
The accumulation of damaged protein is a hallmark of aging that not even the humble baker's yeast can escape. Yet, aged yeast cells spawn off youthful daughter cells without any of the telltale protein clumps. ...
Nov 23, 2011 |
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Good preparation is key -- even for plant cells and symbiotic fungi
Not only mineral oil and petroleum gas, also phosphorous is a scarce resource. According to well-respected scientists who gathered together for a conference in Cambridge this August, we will face significant problems relating ...
Nov 14, 2011 |
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Knocking out key protein in mice boosts insulin sensitivity
By knocking out a key regulatory protein, scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland dramatically boosted ...
Nov 10, 2011 |
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Metabolism
Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that occur in living organisms to maintain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories. Catabolism breaks down organic matter, for example to harvest energy in cellular respiration. Anabolism, on the other hand, uses energy to construct components of cells such as proteins and nucleic acids.
The chemical reactions of metabolism are organized into metabolic pathways, in which one chemical is transformed into another by a sequence of enzymes. Enzymes are crucial to metabolism because they allow organisms to drive desirable but thermodynamically unfavorable reactions by coupling them to favorable ones, and because they act as catalysts to allow these reactions to proceed quickly and efficiently. Enzymes also allow the regulation of metabolic pathways in response to changes in the cell's environment or signals from other cells.
The metabolism of an organism determines which substances it will find nutritious and which it will find poisonous. For example, some prokaryotes use hydrogen sulfide as a nutrient, yet this gas is poisonous to animals. The speed of metabolism, the metabolic rate, also influences how much food an organism will require.
A striking feature of metabolism is the similarity of the basic metabolic pathways between even vastly different species. For example, the set of carboxylic acids that are best known as the intermediates in the citric acid cycle are present in all organisms, being found in species as diverse as the unicellular bacteria Escherichia coli and huge multicellular organisms like elephants. These striking similarities in metabolism are most likely the result of the high efficiency of these pathways, and of their early appearance in evolutionary history.
For more information about Metabolism, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
