Lipid metabolism

Interactive Concepts in Biochemistry - animations :)

preddy good!

Well Fed and Fasting State

Here are four mind maps regarding metabolism. The first one is on what happens during fasting. The three below that one are organ specific and deal with the well fed state. Falling levels of insulin is the key in the fasting mode. I have not included the brain, but during fasting it is supplied by ketone bodies that are produced in the liver.

Fasting State

Well Fed state in Adipose Tissue

Well Fed state in Muscles

Well Fed state in liver

Enzyme Regulation and Reaction Speed

Here is a small map over the regulation of reaction speed within the body. There are four main types of modifiers.

Allosteric modifiers, for instance is the hemoglobin molecule influenced by binding oxygen molecules. The more oxygen molecules that bind to it, the higher the affinity for oxygen gets.

Covalent bindings, switches many enzymes on or off. The most common molecule involved is phosphate. Glycogen Synthase is shut off by being phosphorylated.

Co-Enzymes, are needed in many reactions. NADH is needed when alcohol dehydrogenase breaks down ethanol.

Enzyme Concentration is also a major factor when it comes to speed of reaction in many cases.

Enzyme Regulation and Reaction Speed

Biochemistry

Our biochemistry teacher always said: 'Make sure you take a step back and get the big picutre'. It was a great thought...but the further backed I stepped the more I saw! Here I have found a metabolic map, stripped down to only the bear necessities. Very, very nice PDFs pdfs can be found here!

University of St.Benedict and St.John Biomchem Maps

Biomedicine

When studying today I came across a tricky question. How does insulin affect the Sodium-Potassium ATP-ase? After alot of googling I came across this great page from Colorado State University. It explained that indeed insulin affects the Na/K-pump, by increasing the affinity to sodium and overall turnover rate. It would lead to excess potassium intracellularly, which can be fatal.

Biomedicine at Colorado State

Added a nice page about metabolism from Elmhurst, which is a well known university with a good reputation. The page is quite good. Very ugly and un-modern. It's filed under Biochemistry!

Metabolism from Elmhurst