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7.1: Integration of Macronutrient Metabolism and Alcohol Metabolic Pathways

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    If you were to draw all the macronutrient and alcohol metabolic pathways covered in chapter 6, hopefully it would look something like the figure below.

    The following color scheme is used in this figure:

    • Carbohydrate pathways are orange
    • Triglyceride/fatty acid pathways are purple
    • Protein/amino acid pathways are green
    • Nonclassified pathways are gray
    clipboard_e36f83a229cafd58cf064145c2f679097.png
    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Integrated macronutrient and alcohol metabolism

    To simplify, we are going to remove the glycerol and cholesterol pathways so that we can focus on integrating the other pathways in macronutrient and alcohol metabolism.

    clipboard_e2ce57e54a4bb9b3bb84079321f44a5e1.png
    Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Removal of glycerol and cholesterol pathways1

    Thus, we are left with the following simplified figure:

    clipboard_ebb3928b4735b95125373bda6435690a8.png
    Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Simplified integrated macronutrient and alcohol metabolism1

    Notice that acetyl-CoA is the central metabolite in integrated metabolism that connects many different pathways. For example, carbohydrates can be broken down to acetyl-CoA that can then be used to synthesize fats and ultimately triglycerides.

    Query \(\PageIndex{1}\)

    References

    1. en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CellRespiration.svg

    This page titled 7.1: Integration of Macronutrient Metabolism and Alcohol Metabolic Pathways is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Brian Lindshield via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.