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7.1: Integration of Macronutrient and Alcohol Metabolic Pathways

  • Page ID
    1105
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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. In this figure:

    Figure 7.11.png

    Figure 7.11 Integrated macronutrient and alcohol metabolism. Carbohydrate pathways are orange, Triglyceride/fatty acid pathways are purple, Protein/amino acid pathways are green, Nonclassified pathways are gray

    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.

    Figure 7.12.png

    Figure 7.12 Removal of glycerol and cholesterol pathways1

    Thus, we are left with the following simplified figure:

    Figure 7.13.png

    Figure 7.13 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.

    References & Links

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

    This page titled 7.1: Integration of Macronutrient 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.

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