Biology

Converting glucose for storage purposes

Carbohydrates are found in nearly every food, not just bread and pasta.

Fruits, vegetables, and even meats also contain carbohydrates, although meats don’t contain very many.

Basically, any food that contains sugar has carbohydrates, and most foods are converted to sugars when they’re digested.

When you digest your food, the carbohydrates from it break down into small sugars such as glucose.

Those glucose molecules are then absorbed from your intestinal cells into your bloodstream, which carries the glucose molecules throughout your entire body.

The glucose enters each of your body’s cells and is used as a source of carbon and energy.

Because glucose provides a rapid source of energy, organisms often keep some on hand.

They store it in various polysaccharides that can be quickly broken down when glucose is needed. Consider the following list your primer on the things glucose can be stored as:

✓ Glycogen: Animals, including people, store a polysaccharide of glucose called glycogen.

It has a compact structure, so lots of it can be stored in cells for later use. Your liver, in particular, keeps a large glycogen reserve on hand for when you exercise.

✓ Starch: Plants store glucose as the polysaccharide starch.

The leaves of a plant produce sugar during the process of photosynthesis and then store some of that sugar as starch.

When the simple sugars need to be retrieved for use, the starch is broken down into its smaller components.

Plants also make a polysaccharide of glucose called cellulose. Cellulose plays a structural role for plants rather than a storage role by giving rigidity to the plant cells.

Most animals, including people, can’t digest cellulose because of the type of bonds between the glucose molecules. Because cellulose passes through your digestive tract virtually untouched, it helps maintain the health of your intestines.