#glycogen

[humancelltournament]

Human Cell Tournament Round 2

Which cell or cell component is better?

Glycogen

Memory T cells

Voting ended onNov 22, 2024

Propaganda!

Glycogen is a multibranched polysaccharide of glucose that serves as a form of energy storage in animals, fungi, and bacteria. It is the main storage form of glucose in the human body. In humans, glycogen is made and stored primarily in the cells of the liver and skeletal muscle.

Memory T cells are a subset of T lymphocytes that recognize antigens specific to viruses or other microbial molecules. The primary function of memory cells is to augment the immune response after the reintroduction of previously-encountered pathogen into the body.

[learmonti]

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Carbohydrates act as storehouses of chemical energy (glucose, starch, glycogen) and are components of supportive structures in plants (cellulose), crustacean shells (chitin) and connective tissues in animals (polysaccharides).

"Chemistry" 2e - Blackman, A., Bottle, S., Schmid, S., Mocerino, M., Wille, U.

[phenolph-thalein]

Molecular embroidery!

The Epinephrine pathway, Insulin Pathway, and Glucose regulation bag In more detail - showing all the different molecules involved and the different pathways and signalling cascades.

Commissions for molecular embroidery are open at [email protected]

[bpod-bpod]

Model Muscle

Infantile-onset Pompe disease (IOPD) is a rare but life-threatening disease. It causes skeletal and heart muscle weakness due to a deficiency in an enzyme called acid alpha-glucosidase (GAA). Current treatment with healthy GAA doesn’t provide a complete cure. Researchers now investigate why using the first-ever 3D human skeletal muscle model in a dish. Bundles of human muscle fibres, myobundles (pictured), were grown from muscle cells collected from healthy (left) and IOPD patients (right). IOPD myobundles replicated patient symptoms — reduced GAA enzyme activity, elevated glycogen levels and poor muscle function when under metabolic stress. Treating these myobundles with human GAA, increased GAA activity and reduced glycogen levels as shown by measuring specific protein levels. But this didn’t improve muscle function under stress, as demonstrated by measuring forces generated when myobundles contracted. This model, therefore, presents an effective way to gain new insights into IOPD and potential treatments.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Image adapted from work by Jason Wang and colleagues

Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Communications Biology, May 2021

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[gregorygalloway]

Carl Ferdinand Cori (5 December 1896 – 20 October 1984)

[histopics]

Skeletal muscle stained for glycogen using the PAS method

[er-cryptid]

Glycogen

-- made of alpha-glucose molecules

-- molecules are linked together by glycosidic bonds

-- most bonds are alpha1-4 links

-- there are some 1-6 links

-- 1-6 links form branches in the chain

-- bonds can be hydrolyzed by carbohydras enzymes

-- this forms monosaccharides

-- monosaccharides are used in respiration

-- branches increase the rate of hydrolysis

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