Liver metabolism, Pathways and its disorders

Liver metabolism is nothing but a sum of both physical and chemical changes that take place within the liver of living organisms. Liver plays an important role in living organism. It does many functions like protein synthesis, detoxification and digestion. For this digestion function it releases some set of biochemicals to carry this function. Without this vital organ survival is not possible and there is no other alternate method to replace its absence till now.

For the metabolism process liver play a major role in carrying many functions in the body like decomposition of red blood cells, glycogen storage, hormone production, plasma protein synthesis and detoxification of drugs. Liver adds an alkaline compound fro easy digestion process and also releases bile with the support of lipids we intake through food.

Liver is the main site for occurrence of metabolic pathways as it supports many biochemical reactions which are necessary for metabolism. Liver consists a large part if amino acid synthesis and performs several roles in protein metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism and lipid metabolism.
In carbohydrate metabolism liver does three functions:
Gluconeogenesis: The process of synthesizing glucose from large no amino acids is called as gluconeogenesis.
Glycogenolysis: the process of breaking down of glycogen into basic form of glucose is called as glycogenolysis
Glycogenesis: the process of formation of glycogen from glucose is called a Glycogenesis.
All these functions are well supported by the liver metabolism for forming and breaking of energy for existence purpose.
In protein metabolism: liver supports degradation and synthesis.
In lipid metabolism: liver supports in carrying cholesterol synthesis and lipogenesis.
Liver metabolism produces several coagulation factors like fibrinogen and prothrombin and also produces proteins like proteinC, protein S and antithrobin. For the production of red blood cells liver plays the key role for their production in huge mass.

Liver metabolism is categorized into two distinct metabolic path ways they are:

Liver Catabolism: Break down of large molecules into smaller units for \yielding energy is called as catabolism. Liver metabolism carries the breakdown of hormones and insulin. Liver generates metabolites by breaking down the hemoglobin content and added to bile for emulsifying the fat. Liver metabolism break downs the toxic substance, this process is called as drug metabolism. Liver plays the major role in converting ammonia, co2 and water into urea.
Liver Anabolism (biosynthesis): Building the structure of living organism by the grouping the smaller units is called as Anabolism. Liver anabolism is the process of synthesizing amino acid groups into larger protein groups for performing structural building of the body cells and tissues of the living organisms.
Fats are emulsified by the bile juice produced by the liver and it also produces IGF-1(insulin growth factor-1) which supports the growth of the body cells and polypeptide protein hormone which helps for the growth development in childhood. The bone marrow platelets are regulated by the production of thrombopoietin (glycoprotein hormone) by the liver.

Liver metabolism disorder results in many diseases like jaundice, alagille syndrome, biliary atresia, alpha-1antitrypsin deficiency and langerhans cell disease.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 6:29 am and is filed under Metabolism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Liver metabolism, Pathways and its disorders