Assignment On Biochemistry

Running Head: BIOCHEMISTRY
BIOCHEMISTRY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

BIOCHEMISTRY1
1. Insulin and glucagon are the pancreatic hormones that are secreted by islet cells.
Both are secreted in reaction to concentrations of blood sugar. However, they work in the
opposite manner. The beta cells of the pancreas generally secrete insulin. Insulin secretion
stimulus is increased blood glucose (Güemes, Rahman & Hussain, 2016). Insulin affects
number of cells, including muscles, fat cells and red blood cells. The cells absorb glucose
from blood in reaction to insulin, having the net impact of reducing the concentrations of high
blood glucose to the standard range.
However, huge amount of glucagon is secreted when the blood glucose gets low. The
impact of glucagon is to release the insulin into the bloodstream that has been stored by the
liver in its cells, with the net impact of raising blood glucose. The glucagon also induces the
liver to create glucose from the construction blocks of the other nutrients contained in the
body (Güemes, Rahman & Hussain, 2016).
Cortisol is secreted from the adrenal gland as a steroid hormone. It makes fat and
muscle cells resistant to insulin action and increases liver glucose output. Cortisol mitigates
the intervention of insulin under ordinary conditions (Moon et al., 2014). Under stress or
when a synthetic cortisol is provided as a drug, the concentrations of cortisol increase and
individual becomes insulin resistant. At an early stage of fasting, cortisol stimulates
gluconeogenesis and activates anti-inflammatory and anti-stress pathways. In liver and
muscle glycogenolysis, cortisol also plays a significant but indirect role, breaking down
glycogen to glucose-1-phosphate and glucose. This is achieved by influencing glucagon
passively (Moon et al., 2014).
2. The purpose of cytochrome c oxidase is that it is the last enzyme in the membrane-
based cell chain of the respiratory electron transport chain (Yoshikawa & Shimada, 2015). It
gets an electron from each one of four cytochrome c molecules as well as transfers them to