You are interested in learning more about glycogen metabolism and decide to carry out a series of experiments to understand the pathways better. Both liver and skeletal muscles have large stores of glycogen. First you inhibit liver phosphorylase and observe a drop in blood glucose levels. You then inhibit muscle phosphorylase and do not observe any effect on blood glucose. Explain each result, including why you observe different results by inhibiting enzymes that perform the same function. Glycogen Metabolism: Exploring the pathways through liver and muscle phosphorylase inhibition

Glycogen Metabolism – Exploring pathways to liver and muscle inhibition of phosphorylase

Glycogen metabolism plays an important role in our bodies. Both the liver and the skeletal muscles have large glycogen stores. The pathways were better understood through several experiments. We first inhibited liver-phosphorylase, and saw a decrease in blood glucose. It is liver phosphorylase that is responsible for breaking down the glycogen and then releasing it into the bloodstream. By inhibiting this enzyme, we stopped the glucose being released to the bloodstream. We next inhibited musclephosphorylase, but no change in blood glucose levels. The reason is that muscle phosphorylase is more responsible for the formation of glycogen than it is its destruction (Chen and al., 2019). We inhibited the enzyme to prevent the production of glycogen but not the release into the bloodstream. The blood glucose levels did not change. Cont….